Berlin, April 19 : Two people were seriously injured in a knife attack outside a supermarket in Rochlitz, eastern Germany.

A 23-year-old suspect was arrested at the scene and has since been placed in a correctional facility, police confirmed on Friday.

According to police reports, the man had been sitting near the entrance of the supermarket when a 59-year-old woman exited the building, Xinhua news agency reported.

Without warning, he attacked her with a knife, inflicting multiple stab wounds.

A witness who observed the assault called for help, prompting an 18-year-old employee from a nearby store to intervene.

The young man sustained serious injuries while attempting to assist the victim.

Several passers-by managed to restrain the attacker until police arrived.

Authorities have launched an investigation on suspicion of attempted manslaughter and are continuing to examine the circumstances surrounding the incident.

Both victims have been taken to the hospital to receive treatment. They are not in life-threatening condition.

With the apparent perpetrator in custody, the police have opened an investigation into the attack.

The suspect went into the supermarket on Thursday noon, despite being banned from the premises. A supermarket employee had asked him to leave.

Germany is taking tougher security measures when it comes to knife crime, particularly after a deadly attack in the western German city of Solingen last August.

The German government in recent months has sought to ban knifes at public events such as festivals or sports matches, and has also sought to prohibit knifes at train stations, which are often a hotspot for crime.

Germany has been rocked by a spate of high-profile attacks, which have fired a bitter debate over irregular immigration and public security.

In August, three people were killed and eight wounded in a stabbing spree at a street festival in the western city of Solingen that was claimed by the Islamic State group.

The revelation that authorities had missed the opportunity to deport the suspect, a Syrian asylum-seeker, stirred outrage in Germany.

Scholz on Wednesday said that "I am sick of seeing such acts of violence occurring in our country every few weeks, by perpetrators who have actually come here to find protection here".

Scholz said that "a false notion of tolerance is completely inappropriate here".

"The authorities must work as hard as possible to find out why the attacker was still in Germany."

The attack in Aschaffenburg comes as Germany is in the midst of an election campaign, after the collapse of Scholz's coalition in November.

The Chancellor's center-left Social Democrats currently trail in the polls behind the conservative CDU-CSU bloc and the far-right Alternative for Germany, who have both promised a crackdown on immigration.

"Things cannot go on like this," Conservative leader Friedrich Merz said on social media platform X after the attack.

"We must and will restore law and order!"

The AfD's top candidate Alice Weidel also posted a message on X urging "remigration now!" -- using a term that the far right has adopted to call for the mass deportation of migrants.

/IANS