A Syrian migrant accused of stabbing a bus passenger in the neck from behind after being refused a cigarette is set to appear before a judge in Berlin as police investigate whether he was also responsible for a later knife threat against a woman on another bus.
The first attack took place at around 5:50 a.m. on Thursday at the Hermannstraße/Sonnenallee bus stop in Berlin’s Neukölln district. According to police, a 33-year-old man was preparing to board the M41 bus when a 36-year-old man suddenly attacked him from behind with a knife, stabbing him in the neck.
The suspect initially fled the scene, while the victim collapsed with serious injuries. The bus driver alerted the emergency services, and paramedics treated the injured man before taking him to hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery.
Police initially said the victim’s condition was critical. According to an update reported by Tagesspiegel on Friday, he remains seriously injured but is now conscious and able to communicate.
Investigators said the suspect had approached the 33-year-old shortly before the attack and asked him for a cigarette. The victim refused. A short time later, as he boarded the bus, the attacker allegedly stabbed him from behind.
Police are also examining whether the same man was involved in a second incident later that morning. At around 9:35 a.m., a 36-year-old woman was threatened with a knife on the M29 bus on Pannierstraße and forced to hand over money.
Authorities are still trying to verify the suspect’s identity, but several media outlets, including Bild, reported that he had claimed to be Syrian and born in Damascus.
The suspect is expected to be brought before a judge on Friday as prosecutors seek an arrest warrant.
A police investigation into aggravated assault is ongoing.
The attack comes amid growing concern over violent crime on Germany’s public transport network, with several serious assaults reported on buses, trains, and at stations in recent months.
Last month, a 13-year-old Iraqi-born repeat offender was arrested after a 62-year-old bus driver was beaten into a coma in Leipzig.
The confrontation reportedly began after the driver told a group of disruptive youths to be quiet on bus route 90 near the Sophienstraße stop. Police initially described the incident only as a physical altercation in which the driver was injured and required inpatient hospital treatment, but later reports said the teenager had struck him with at least three headbutts.
Because of his age, the 13-year-old cannot be held criminally responsible under German law.
In March, an 18-year-old woman was seriously wounded in a knife attack on a regional train near Sulzbach in Saarland. Police said the alleged attacker, a 21-year-old man, was arrested at the scene and that the two knew each other before the incident. The woman was taken to the hospital with serious injuries, although officials said she was not in critical condition.
That case followed another fatal attack in Saarland in February, when a train conductor was beaten to death on the route between Landstuhl and Homburg. The Greek national responsible struck the conductor repeatedly in the head with such force that the victim died several days later.
Also in February, three foreign nationals from Yemen, Eritrea, and Sierra Leone were accused of beating a 38-year-old man at Rosenheim station after he asked them to be quieter. The three suspects were charged with grievous bodily harm, according to the Federal Police Directorate Munich.
Official figures and media reports have pointed to a wider rise in violence across Germany’s transport system. Welt reported that violent crimes at Berlin Central Station tripled in 2024 compared with 2019, while Cologne saw a 70 percent increase over the same period.
Jens Spahn, the CDU parliamentary group leader, linked the conditions at major train stations to wider problems in German cities, saying in a Bild interview, “Look at a main train station, in Duisburg, in Hamburg, in Frankfurt. Neglect, drug dealers, young men, mostly with a migrant background, mostly from Eastern Europe or Arab-Muslim cultural areas. This also has to do with irregular migration, as it looks in our inner cities, in the marketplaces.”
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