Germany’s police said they had arrested a woman after at least 12 people were injured in a knife attack at the main station in the northern city of Hamburg.

Some of the injured on Friday sustained life-threatening injuries in the stabbing, emergency services said, although the exact number remained unclear.

Around 6:30 pm (1600 GMT), Hamburg police said on X they were carrying out a major operation at the main train station in Germany's second-largest city.

"A person injured several people with a knife at the main train station" and a suspect had been arrested, they said.

The suspect, police subsequently said, was a 39-year-old woman who was thought to have "acted alone".

Investigations into the incident were "running at full speed", police said, without giving an indication of a possible motive.

A spokesman for the Hamburg fire department told AFP that 12 people had been injured in the knife attack.

Among them were "six people with life-threatening injuries", the spokesperson said. German media however, reported the number of people with very severe injuries was lower.

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The attack took place in the town of Spisska Stara Ves near Slovakia's border with Poland, around 280 kilometres northeast of the capital Bratislava.

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Security concerns

The attack took place in the middle of evening rush hour at the end of the working week, according to German media.

The suspect was thought to have carried out the attack "against passengers" at the station, a spokesperson for the Hanover federal police directorate, which also covers Hamburg, told AFP.

Images of the scene showed access to the platforms at one end of the station blocked off by police and people being loaded into waiting ambulances.

Some of the victims in the attack were being treated on board waiting trains in the station, Bild reported.

German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said on X that four platforms at the station had been closed.

The incident would lead to "delays and diversions in long-distance services", Deutsche Bahn said in a post on X.

Germany has been rocked in recent months by a series of violent attacks with often far-right extremist motivations that have put security at the top of the agenda.

The most recent, on Sunday, saw four people were injured in a stabbing at a bar in the city of Bielefeld.

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Footage taken by a witness showed people who were bleeding and had fallen to the ground, and one older person trying to help another.

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