Berlin — A suspect has been arrested after four people were lightly injured Saturday in knife attacks in the southern German city of Munich, police said.

The man assaulted passersby in several places near Rosenheimer Platz in the eastern part of the city centre at around 0630 GMT, inflicting "light" injuries on four people, a police spokesman told AFP.

The suspect detained by police "very strongly" resembles the perpetrator of the attacks, Munich police spokesman Marcus da Gloria Martins said at a press briefing.

According to police, the suspect was captured travelling by bicycle a few kilometers south of where the attacks took place. He did not resist arrest.

The spokesman added that police could not yet definitely say that he was man who carried out the attacks in a neighborhood close to the center of Munich.

The suspect was being questioned by police, he said, adding that it was "too early" to determine the motive for the attack.

A total of five men and one woman were attacked "at random" in six different places but only four of them suffered "superficial" injuries, police said.

Police have described the perpetrator of the attacks as a man in his forties with blond hair, wearing grey pants and a running jacket, who had fled the scene on a black bicycle. He was also carrying a backpack and a camping bed roll.

In July 2016, a German-Iranian teenager who police say was obsessed with mass murderers, shot dead nine people at a Munich shopping mall before turning the gun on himself. — AFP