Moment police close in on axeman with firebomb near Euro fan zone

Footage has now come through of the moment police confronted an attacker at the Euro 2024 Championship earlier this afternoon.

The clip shows the individual, dressed in black, holding an axe in one hand and what appears to be a Molotov cocktail in the other. 

The individual shouts at officers deployed in Hamburg’s Reppenbahm district before he is doused in pepper spray. 

Turning away from the spray, the attacker then heads off down the street in the opposite direction. 

After the attack, which took place around 12.30pm local time, Hamburg police said in a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter: ‘At #StPauli there is currently a major police operation. 

‘According to initial findings, a person threatened police officers with a pickaxe and an incendiary device. 

‘The police then used their firearms. The attacker was injured and is currently receiving medical treatment.’

The area in which the attack took place was not far from some 40,000 Dutch fans who had gathered for a march ahead of the Championship match between Poland and the Netherlands, according to Bild. 

Rory Smith, chief football correspondent for the New York Times, posted on X: ‘To confirm: police have shot a man threatening fans with an axe a few hundred yards away from the fan zone in Hamburg. 

‘Attacker is “severely injured” and has just been driven away in an ambulance.’

Authorities have said that one officer fired a warning shot before others opened fire at the individual.

It follows after another attack yesterday that left one person dead and three people injured at a football party in Magdeburg, Germany.

An unnamed man stabbed someone at a housing estate in the city before breaking into a private Euros viewing party nearby.

Experts have recently said how the championship has presented an exceptionally ‘complex security challenge’ as authorities seek to monitor and contain a wide variety of different threats.

Dr Hans-Jakob Schindler has identified terrorism, hooliganism and far-right violence as some of the most pressing concerns at present.

Amid the ongoing operation, German police have recently suggested England fans take to smoking cannabis instead of drinking pints, in an apparent attempt to prevent tempers from flaring.

It comes as a football policing expert, Dr Mike Hope, suggested England fans are themselves targets for hooligans from other nations.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.