The Afghan asylum seeker attacked passengers with an axe and knife on a train near Wuerzburg-Heidingsfeld, before he was shot and killed by a special police unit. The interior ministry could not confirm whether some of the victims were in a life-threatening condition

Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said the attacker was a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who had arrived in Germany as an unaccompanied minor and had been living with a foster family in Ochsenfurt, south of Würzburg, for “a few months”.

After passengers managed to alert the driver, the train was stopped in the Heidingsfeld district of Würzburg and the attacker initially managed to flee from the carriage on foot, Herrmann said.

A police taskforce that happened to be in the vicinity then pursued the attacker, shooting dead the teenager, who was carrying an axe and a knife when he had attacked members of the unit.

Asked whether the attack had an Islamist background, Herrmann said one witness inside the train said the teenager had shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the assault. The report was being investigated.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for an attack on a train in Germany that injured at least five people.

The claim was posted on the group’s Aamaq news agency on Tuesday, it says the attacker was “a member of the Islamic State” group and carried out the attack in response to the militant group’s calls to attack countries that are members of the anti-ISIS coalition.

A senior Germany security official said that a hand-painted flag of the ISIS group was found in the attacker’s room.