The head of Germany’s GdP police union has called for technical support using artificial intelligence (AI) for law-enforcers following Friday’s knife attack that left 18 people injured at Hamburg Central Station.

“Unfortunately, such attacks can never be prevented 100%,” said union chief Andreas Rosskopf, according to the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper.

However, there is now an urgent need for the federal police to be able to carry out comprehensive checks at railway stations, Rosskopf stressed.

He advocated using AI-supported camera technology “that also includes behaviour recognition so that such behavioural anomalies can be detected in advance.”

Early on Friday evening, 18 people were injured in a knife attack on a crowded station platform, four of them critically.

Police arrested a 39-year-old woman at the scene who is to be brought before a magistrate on Saturday.