BERLIN (AFP) - Germany has been hit by a spate of attacks, the deadliest of which struck a Christmas market in Berlin in December 2016, leaving 12 dead.

On Friday (July 28) a man wielding a knife stormed into a supermarket in the German city of Hamburg, killing one person and wounding four others before being detained by police.

His motive was not immediately clear, but mayor Olaf Scholz spoke of "hate" behind his actions, while media reported that authorities were investigating the attacker's Islamist connections.

Some previous attacks: .

ISIS claims responsibility

On July 18, 2016, a 17-year-old asylum seeker, wielding an axe and a knife, attacks passengers on a Bavarian train.

The assailant, believed to be Afghan, injures five people, four of them tourists from Hong Kong.

He is shot dead by police. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group releases a video purportedly featuring the attacker announcing he would carry out an "operation" in Germany, and presenting himself as a "soldier of the caliphate".

On July 24, 2016, a 27-year-old failed Syrian asylum seeker blows himself up near an open-air music festival in the southern city of Ansbach, wounding 15 others.

The Bavarian interior minister says the man had "pledged allegiance" to ISIS, while the extremist-linked Amaq news agency says he is a "soldier" of the group.

On Oct 30, 2016, ISIS claims responsibility for a knife attack in Hamburg on Oct 16 that left a teenager dead.

Then, on Dec 19, 2016, a man hijacks a truck and ploughs into shoppers at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring 48.

The attacker, Tunisian Anis Amri, is shot dead by police in Milan four days later, and the rampage is claimed by ISIS.

Unclaimed attacks

On Sept 17, 2015, an Iraqi man who spent time in jail for membership in an Islamist terrorist group is shot dead by German police after he stabs and seriously wounds a policewoman. The 41-year-old man had been convicted in 2008 of planning an attack in Berlin against former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi.

On Feb 27, 2016, a 16-year-old German-Moroccan girl stabs a police officer in the neck with a kitchen knife, wounding him badly, an assault allegedly "ordered" by ISIS but which was not claimed by the group.