HRADEC KRALOVE: A 16-year-old boy killed two women in a knife attack at a discount shop in the Czech Republic on Thursday, police said, adding the motive remained unclear. Police arrested the teenager, a Czech national, minutes after the attack at an Action branch on the outskirts of Hradec Kralove, around 100 kilometers east of Prague. “Both of those attacked suffered injuries which were so serious that they could not be saved despite all efforts of the rescuers,” police said on X.

Police spokeswoman Iva Kormosova said the teenager attacked a shop assistant at the counter and another worker in a service area of the store. The attacker’s motive was unclear but that there was nothing to indicate a terror attack, police said. “The information we have for now seems to suggest he chose the victims randomly,” they added.

Rescuers received the first call about 0730 GMT, half an hour after the shop had opened. “When we arrived, we found two people stabbed,” Anatolij Truhlar, head doctor of the local air rescue service, told the private CNN Prima News TV channel. “Unfortunately, despite 40 minutes of resuscitation efforts, both persons died,” he added. Police were deployed outside the Action discount store where a lone candle flickered, and a part of an adjacent car park was closed with police tape until Thursday afternoon. “I think you’re not safe anywhere, given what’s going on around us,” passer-by Adela Ptackova told AFP.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala expressed condolences to the families of the victims, calling the murders “an incomprehensible, horrendous act”. Terror attacks are rare in the Czech Republic, an EU and NATO member of 10.9 million people, but in 2023 a student killed 14 people and wounded 25 in a shooting rampage at a Prague university. The Czech Republic’s southern neighbor Austria is reeling from the murder of a teenager in a knife attack by a Syrian asylum seeker in the city of Villach at the weekend. — AFP