People were killed and injured in an attack at a festival in the city of Solingen in western Germany on Friday, the news agency dpa reported.

It was not immediately clear how many casualties there were.

The local Solinger Tagblatt newspaper reported that authorities told people to leave downtown Solingen and that one of the festival organisers, Philipp Muller, said on a stage that emergency workers were fighting for the lives of nine people.

The dpa report cited unidentified police sources as saying the weapon was believed to be a knife and no arrests had been made yet.

The festival marking the city’s 650th anniversary began on Friday and was supposed to run until Sunday.

Solingen has around 160,000 inhabitants and is located near the bigger cities of Cologne and Duesseldorf.