A man accused as the main suspect in the death of 3 people, with knife blows, in Germany, surrendered to the police.

He confessed to the crimes and the police are already investigating.

In a joint statement with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Düsseldorf police said the 26-year-old suspect “said he was responsible for the attack.”

The man is a Syrian citizen who had applied for asylum in Germany, the police told The Associated Press.

“This man’s involvement in this crime is currently under heavy investigation,” it said in a statement.

Today, Robert Habeck, German vice chancellor, said that he intends to tighten the law on the carrying of bladed weapons.

The knife attack, which left 3 dead and 8 injured, took place this Friday around 21:45 local time (20:45 Lisbon time), in the historic center of Solingen, near one of the stages where a concert of the Diversity Festival was taking place.

After stabbing several people at random, the attacker managed to flee through the desperation that set in.

Earlier, police had already announced the arrest in Solingen of a suspect involved in the case, a 15-year-old boy who allegedly had prior knowledge of the attack and did nothing to prevent it.

The young man, arrested at the family home, was identified with information in the testimony of two people who overheard a suspicious conversation before the events during the festival and who, shortly after the attack, sought the police.

Then, overnight, German police reported a second arrest related to the attack.

“We followed a complaint and that’s why there was a special forces operation,” a police representative said at the time, after the press said that searches were underway at a refugee reception center in the center of Solingen.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack

On Saturday, the self-proclaimed Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, without presenting evidence of confirmation of this authorship.

The extremist group said on its news website that the attack targeted Christians and that it carried out the attacks on Friday night “to avenge Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere,” a report that could not be verified concretely.

The attack comes as there is a debate on immigration ahead of regional elections next Sunday in Germany’s Saxony and Thuringia regions, where the populist anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party is expected to do well.

In June, Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed that the country would resume deporting criminals from Afghanistan and Syria after a knife attack by an Afghan migrant killed a police officer and four others.

Friday’s attack left the city of Solingen, with 160,000 inhabitants, near Cologne and Dusseldorf, in a state of mourning and shock.