The motive, as usual, remains a mystery.

Swiss police say a 32-year-old Iranian asylum seeker armed with an axe and a knife held 15 hostages on a train between Baulmes and Yverdon-les-Bains for almost four hours until police stormed the train and killed the man late on Thursday.

“The hostages were all released unharmed,” police in the Vaud canton say in a statement. “The hostage taker was fatally wounded during the intervention.”

No details regarding the perpetrator’s possible motives have been released.

Asylum seekers who were denied have been responsible for violence in Europe in the past. And the gent in question apparently didn’t speak any of the local languages

The Farsi and English-speaking hostage taker was armed with an ax and a knife, as the Vaud cantonal police announced at a media conference in Yverdon-les-Bains at midnight on Friday night. Accordingly, he forced the train driver to leave the driver’s cab and join the 14 train passengers present. The 15 hostages – some of them tied up – were held on the train, which stopped at the Essert-sous-Champvent stop with the doors closed.

The police were alerted by the people trapped on the train and then cordoned off the area. With the help of a Farsi interpreter, negotiation specialists from the cantonal police communicated with the hostage-taker, particularly through messages on the hostages’ cell phones, according to Jean-Christophe Sauterel, head of communications for the Vaud police.

Meanwhile, around 60 police officers took up positions around the train. At around 10:15 p.m., almost four hours after the hostage-taking began, the emergency services intervened when the hostage-taker was not near the trapped people. The police said they used explosives as a distraction before storming the train.

“When the hostage taker stormed towards the emergency team with his axe, a police officer used his weapon to protect the hostages and fatally hit the perpetrator,” said Sauterel. He died at the scene, even though there was a doctor among the police team. The police acted in self-defense, said Sauterel.

This could be the usual sort of story, but there’s an interesting angle involving Iran and Switzerland.

Iranian leaders, including President Raisi, had been hit with crimes against humanity charges in Switzerland and it had imposed sanctions on Iran for moving drones to Russia. Iran is not happy with Switzerland and when that happens, all sorts of things like this can take place.