Since the attacker who carried out the explosion was originally from Syria before he came to Ansbach, it was impossible for Germany to return him directly to that country. Authorities couldn’t confirm whether he planned to plant it to injure others or whether it was an intended suicide attack – though CNN is now referring to the deceased as a suicide bomber – but they did find metal items in the backpack that contained the explosive device, which could’ve caused more fatalities.
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“I think that after this video there’s no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamic background.’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”.
IS claimed responsibility for the bombing, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports IS. Police classified this attack as an act of terrorism after a hand-painted Islamic State flag was found among the refugee’s belongings.
The second attack on Sunday happened outside of a music festival in Ansbach.
The fourth, a teenager who went on a shooting rampage in Munich on Friday killing nine before turning the gun on himself, was born and raised in Germany, the son of Iranian asylum seekers who arrived in the 1990s.
He had been in trouble with police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences and had faced deportation to Bulgaria.
One wrinkle in this story is that the bomber’s application for refugee status had been rejected a year ago.
In a nation grappling with massive backlog of hundreds of thousands of asylum applications, the attack prompted a chorus of voices critical of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s initial decision to welcome refugees and others during a huge surge into Europe previous year.
The fact he was an asylum-seeker will renew pressure on Angela Merkel over her “open-door” refugee policy, under which more than 1 million migrants entered Germany past year.
At a joint press conference with Seehofer on Tuesday, Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann said he would push to allow the German army to be deployed within the country in the case of future attacks.
Twelve people were hurt, three of them seriously, in the blast in Ansbach, some 250 miles south of Berlin in the state of Bavaria.
Germany has largely avoided large-scale terrorist attacks on its soil, in contrast with the assaults that killed hundreds in Paris, Brussels and Nice over the previous year.
The explosion on Sunday in Ansbach injured 15 people and also resulted in the death of the bomber himself.
Aamaq later published what it said was a video of the attacker.
Fertinger said there likely would have been more casualties if the man had not been turned away. While the spate of violence in Germany is smaller in scale, the incidents could revive pressure on Merkel over her migration policy as she struggles to confront a range of crises buffeting Europe. He was planning to introduce measures at a meeting of Bavaria’s conservative government today to strengthen police forces, in part by ensuring that they have adequate equipment.
Already steeped in grief and shock, Germans were further rattled by news that a Syrian refugee had killed a 45-year-old Polish woman with a large kebab knife at a snack bar in the southwestern city of Reutlingen on Sunday. The suspect was a 27-year-old Syrian migrant who had been denied asylum and was waiting to be deported to Bulgaria.
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Interior Minister Thomas de Mazière added: “We mustn’t put refugees under general suspicion, even if there are investigations against some individuals”.
