A few hours later a suicide bomber killed himself and injured 12 people in an explosion near a music festival in the southern German city of Ansbach. His intentions, however, remain unclear, especially after the Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann revealed in a press conference on Monday that the man had arrived in Germany two years back and had tried to commit suicide twice before.
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The explosion also injured at least 12 others, three of them seriously.
The spokesman, Tobias Plate, said he could not say “at this moment why the deportation” of the 27-year-old failed asylum seeker didn’t happen.
Growing anxiety about refugees has fueled the rise of right-wing populist group Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose most famous figure, Frauke Petry, pointed the blame at Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policies for the recent violence.
“It’s bad. that someone who came into our country to seek shelter has now committed such a heinous act and injured a large number of people who are at home here, some seriously”, Herrmann said at the press conference.
He said authorities had investigated 59 allegations of migrants tied to terror groups, most of which have turned up empty.
“He always said that, no, I’m not with them, I don’t like them and such stuff”. It remains unknown if the blast was a terrorist attack.
Police said the woman was 45 years old and from Poland.
A 100 percent accountability check was issued for the roughly 7,000 military and civilian personnel in the US military community scattered throughout Ansbach, Katterbach and Illesheim in the southeastern state of Bavaria following the attack.
The proposed changes, which must still be enacted by European Union member states, would also set more stringent rules for deactivating previously fully-functioning guns and making them available for sale.
Wielding an ax and a knife, he wounded eight people on a train near Wuerzbuerg, not far from Munich, before he was shot dead by police.
EXPLOSIVES, METAL PARTS Herrmann said the man, whose identity has not yet been released, had been living in Ansbach for a year.
A special police officer examines the scene after an explosion occurred in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016.
On Sunday night, the individual was denied entry into the festival, which had roughly 2,500 in attendance. The police spokesman said the man was being interrogated after receiving medical treatment.
Germany is reeling after nine people died in a shopping centre shooting rampage in Munich on Friday and four people were wounded in an axe attack on a train in Wuerzburg on July 18.
On Sunday, another Syrian asylum seeker was arrested in the town of Reutlingen, Baden-Wuerttemberg, after allegedly using a machete to kill a Polish woman she had apparently rejected his romantic advances.
The attacks in Germany came days after a deadly attack in France’s Nice where a Tunisian man drove a truck into the crowd celebrating the Bastille Day holiday, brutally killing 84 people.
In reference to the Munich attack, what emerges as we peer into the life and thoughts of the 18 year old attacker is the picture of a deranged lone gunman obsessed with mass killings. He also knew the attacker had a pistol.
Investigators say the two teenagers met previous year as in-patients at a psychiatric ward.
In January, Bavaria’s justice minister launched a state program in Ansbach meant to teach refugees the basics of law in their new host country.
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Grieshaber reported from Berlin.
