A knife-wielding attacker injured a patient at a clinic run by a doctor of Turkish origin in Germany's Mönchengladbach on Thursday in an apparent anti-Muslim attack.

The 56-year-old unidentified assailant entered the clinic at the city's Bismarck street in the early hours of Thursday and threatened staff and patients inside before slightly injuring a patient at the waiting room of the clinic run by İsmail Altınay. Eyewitnesses said the man first asked "is this [an] Islamists' clinic?" before uttering threats to the staff and stabbed the patient who tried to stop him. The assailant was later detained by police. Quoted by İhlas News Agency, Altınay said he was not at the scene when the attack took place. He said a Turkish and a Palestinian patient at the clinic tried to stop the assailant.

"He injured a person. The victim had seven stab wounds and we treated him here at the clinic," he said. Altınay said the assailant was also a former patient. He said he shared the clinic with other doctors but when the assailant's doctor was on a leave, he had to treat the patient for an unspecified illness.

"I talked to his doctors and they told me that the assailant had signs of a mental illness. He apparently knew we were serving to people from different ethnic communities. Such an attack is inevitable when Islamophobia is in the spotlight," the doctor said. A court on Friday ordered the assailant committed to the psychiatric hospital for treatment.