Volkswacht Bodensee - Man badly wounded in suspected stabbing at Berlin's Holocaust memorial

"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".

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

Police later said "the victim is undergoing surgery" and that "the search is ongoing" for the attacker, adding: "We don't know anything about motive."

Police armed with assault rifles were at the cordoned-off 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 crane apparently being used to try 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.

Berlin fire services spokesman Dominik Pritz said six people who had witnessed the attack were being cared for by the rescue service.

- Spate of attacks -

The incident came two days before national elections and after a series of deadly 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 was 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.

Germany has grown increasingly alarmed about rising anti-Jewish sentiment since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

A record 5,164 anti-Semitic crimes were recorded in 2023, compared with 2,641 in 2022, according to figures from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

In an attack in 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.

Other attacks have recently shocked Germany.

In another attack in January 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.

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

L.Stucki--VB