Schaffhausen chainsaw attack: Suspect arrested after five injured in Swiss town

The suspected perpetrator of a chainsaw attack that wounded at least five people in Switzerland has been arrested, according to Swiss police.

The attacker had been at large since the incident, which prompted officers to seal off the centre of the Swiss town of Schaffhausen.

At least five people were injured, two seriously, after the man went on a rampage in the small town on the German border on Monday.

A shop owner told Swiss newspaper Blick a man with a chainsaw was walking the streets and police later confirmed the report.

Police said the attack was not being treated as an act of terrorism.

Police official Ravi Landolt identified the suspected perpetrator as Franz Wrousis. It was unclear whether this was the man arrested by Swiss officials.

Prosecutor Peter Sticher said the man had no fixed address but previously had been registered himself as living in the south-eastern Swiss canton of Graubünden.

The building where the attack took place is home to a bookshop and insurance and lawyers’ offices. It was not immediately clear who or what the man’s target was.

A health insurance company that has an office in the building where the attack took place said two of its employees had to be taken to a hospital, Blick reported.

“We can confirm that a man with a chainsaw came into the agency and seriously wounded two of our employees,” said Christina Wettstein, a spokeswoman for insurer CSS.

“They are undergoing operations at the moment and we don’t know how they are.”

The company does not know yet whether the other three wounded people were customers or passers-by, she added. It also does not know whether the attacker was a customer.