Twenty-eight people were injured in Munich on Thursday, February 13th after a man drove a car into a group of protesters.
The suspect is a 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, and Bavaria’s minister-president Markus Söder said the incident was “probably an attack.”
According to eyewitnesses, the man intentionally drove his Mini Cooper into a crowd of people who had been attending a union strike held by public sector workers. The vehicle had threaded its way between police vehicles and then accelerated. The police fired a shot to stop the vehicle.
According to German media reports, two people were “very seriously injured,” one of them, a child, had to be resuscitated.
Police said they have detained the driver. The suspect was previously known to police for theft and drug offences.
The incident occurred around 1.5 kilometres from the venue where the Munich Security Conference kicks off on Friday. The conference will host leading politicians, such as U.S. vice president JD Vance and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. The Bavarian minister-president said it was unlikely that the attack was in connection with the conference.
The attack comes as Germany prepares for national elections later this month, with illegal migration and crimes committed by migrants at the top of voters’ concerns.
A series of attacks has been committed by migrants in the past year, many of whom were rejected asylum seekers who should have been deported.
Among the most horrendous attacks were the murder of a policeman in Mannheim, the killing of three festivalgoers in Solingen, the Christmas market attack which left five people dead, and most recently the murder of of a 2-year-old toddler and a 41-year-old man in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg.
The incidents have prompted tough talk on all sides of the political spectrum, with the opposition centre-right CDU/CSU alliance proposing to turn back all illegal and undocumented migrants at the border.
Their non-binding motion was passed in the parliament a few weeks ago but instead of focusing on the topic at hand, the left-wing ruling parties have been venting their outrage at CDU leader Friedrich Merz for allowing the right-wing anti-immigration AfD party to support his motion.
Voters’ frustration with the incompetent handling of the migration crisis has propelled AfD into second place, and the party is expected to get 20-21% of the votes on February 23rd.
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel tweeted after the attack:
The terror-driver from Munich was an Afghan asylum seeker known to the police. Again, many seriously injured, again, women and children among the victims. My deepest sympathy goes out to the victims and their families. Should it go on like this forever? Let’s carry out a U-turn on migration!
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose government has overseen a pro-migration agenda, described the car-ramming incident as “awful,” adding that the suspect must be punished and deported.
Bavarian PM Markus Söder said. “This is not the first attack of this kind,” and “something fundamental has to change in Germany.”
