The man is said to have pushed the boy and his mother onto the train tracks, and then also trying to push another person as well. According to initial investigations, the suspect is a 40-year-old man with Eritrean citizenship who did not know his victims. According to the German Press Agency (dpa), he lives in Switzerland. He has not yet spoken about the attack. According to a spokeswoman for the public prosecutor's office, he will be brought before a judge on Tuesday.

According to police, the 40-year-old mother escaped onto a footpath between two tracks. The third person was able to get to safety without falling onto the tracks. The public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt is conducting a homicide investigation and is evaluating video recordings.

Politicians condemned the crime. Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) announced that he would interrupt his vacation. "In view of several serious incidents very recently," he wanted to return to meet with security authorities. According to dpa information, the meeting will also be about attacks and threats against representatives of the Left Party, bomb threats against mosques, and the racist attack on an Eritrean in Wächtersbach, Hesse.

On Tuesday, Seehofer wants to report to the public. "The perpetrator will be held responsible for the crime using all legal means." If necessary, the Minister would provide the state of Hesse with any support needed, for example, from the federal police or the Federal Criminal Police Office.

Seehofer said that some people have already made their own assessment about the crime, but it can only be properly evaluated once all the information has been collected and studied. On Twitter, some users linked the incident on Monday with German asylum policy.

The Frankfurt case is similar to an attack that took place about a week ago in Voerde in North Rhine-Westphalia, where a man pushed a woman in front of a train at a railway station, killing her.

In the Frankfurt attack, a police spokeswoman said witnesses reported seeing the man pushing the eight-year-old boy and his mother in front of an arriving ICE at platform 7. The incident happened on Monday morning. The child was struck by the train and sustained fatal injuries. The suspect fled, was pursued by passers-by and later arrested by the police outside the station.

The eight-year-old's mother was taken to hospital and given emergency medical care. A police spokesman said that she would be questioned as soon as possible.

Investigators called on all witnesses to contact the police with relevant information. Photos and videos could also be uploaded via a special website.

At the main station, tracks 4 to 9 were closed for several hours. According to a spokeswoman for Deutsche Bahn, there were cancellations and delays. It was unclear when the tracks would be opened again. In the afternoon, Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) released a special telephone number for psychological support for those who witnessed the incident. Frankfurt Central Station is one of the largest railway stations in Germany and is visited by almost 500,000 people every day.

Hesse's Prime Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU) said that he was shaken. "It is bewildering that mother and child were pushed in front of a train. The investigation of this heinous act is now in the hands of the responsible authorities," he said.

Only on Saturday last week, a 34-year-old mother had been pushed in front of a regional train in the station of the Lower Rhine town of Voerde and was killed. The 28-year-old suspect - a Serbian born in Germany - is in custody on suspicion of murder. According to the investigators, the suspect and the victim did not know each other, as in the Frankfurt case.

(Orig. text: dpa, Translation: Carol Kloeppel)