Volkswacht Bodensee - Man badly wounded in assault at Berlin's Holocaust memorial: police

"A man was seriously injured by an unknown person" there, police said on X, and "rescue workers are caring for several people on site who had to witness the events".

A police spokeswoman told AFP that "the unknown man attacked the other man, possibly with a sharp object" around 6:00 pm local time (1700 GMT).

Sirens could be heard wailing in the area near the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a sombre grid of concrete steles located near the iconic Brandenburg Gate, commemorating Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

An AFP reporter at the scene witnessed dozens of police cars and a firetruck with an attached cherry picker being used in an apparent bid to gain a bird's eye view of the sprawling site to look for the fugitive.

Bild daily labelled it a "knife attack" and said emergency services were treating several people for shock.

The incident comes two days before national elections and after a series of bloody attacks that have shocked Germany, including car-rammings and stabbing sprees.

German police said earlier Friday they had arrested an 18-year-old Russian man on suspicion of planning a "politically motivated" attack in Berlin.

The man was detained late Thursday in the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin, police and prosecutors said in a statement.

Authorities did not provide further details about the alleged attack plot, but the Tagesspiegel newspaper reported the suspect was Chechen and is believed to have been planning an attack on the Israeli embassy.

Riot police and specialist officers were involved in making the arrest, which came after a tip-off, officials said.

In an attack in early early September, German police shot dead a young Austrian known for his ties to radical Islam as he was preparing to carry out an attack on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

In December a man drove an SUV at high speed through a Christmas market crowd, killing six people and wounding hundreds in the eastern city of Magdeburg.

Germans were shocked by another attack in January when a man with a kitchen knife attacked a kindergarten group, killing a two-year-old boy and a man who tried to protect the toddlers.

A third major attack followed just 10 days before the election, when a man ploughed a Mini Cooper car through a street rally in Munich.

L.Maurer--VB