VILLACH: A stabbing that left a teenager dead and five other people injured in southern Austria was an `Islamist attack`, the interior minister said on Sunday, with a 23-year-old Syrian asylum seeker held.

Saturday`s attack in the city of Villach has shaken the Alpine nation, where farright-led talks to form a government collapsed this week with security one of the major issues.

Austria had so far only seen one jihadist attack, in 2020, when a convicted IS sympathiser went on a shooting rampage in downtown Vienna, killing four. In Villach`s `Islamist attack with IS connections,` the Syrian asylum seeker held was radicalised online `in a short space of time`, according to Interior Minister Gerhard Karner.

During a raid of the suspect`s apartment, police said they found `clear evidence of Islamist radical thought`, such as IS flags on the wall.

No weapons or `other dangerous items` were found, police said, adding the suspect was under investigation for `murder and attempted murder` charges.

In the attack in the centre of the city in Carinthia state, the suspect went after passers-by with a folding knife.

A fellow Syrian food deliverer, also an asylum seeker, intervened by ramming a car into the attacker, who was slightly injured and then arrested.

A 14-year-old Austrian died, while five other people were hurt, including three of them seriously. Among the wounded are two other teens, both aged 15.-AFP