German police investigates at the site in Ansbach, Germany, Monday, July 25, 2016, where a failed asylum-seeker from Syria blew himself up and wounded people after being turned away from an open-air music festival in southern Germany.
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The demands for better security screening of migrants and increased police presence in Germany came after a 27-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker set off a backpack laden with explosives and shrapnel Sunday night after being refused entry to a crowded music festival in the Bavarian city of Ansbach, killing himself and wounding 15 people.
Roman Fertinger, the deputy police chief in nearby Nueremberg, said it was likely there would have been more casualties if the man had managed to enter the concert venue.
“There was also a laptop that showed pictures and film sequences that glorify violence and are unequivocally linked to IS”, he told a news conference.
The Ansbach bombing was the fourth violent attack to rock Germany in the past week. “This morning there were a lot of police cars, and so I felt that ‘yes, this is how it was in Jerusalem when I was there a year ago.’…”
He had been living in Ansbach since July 2 and was known to the authorities after committing two offences.
Beginning with knowing who is in the country and where they are.
They were trying to find out if the attacker had help making the bomb and whether it exploded prematurely, which could suggest he wanted to kill as many people as possible.
On Sunday, a 21-year-old Syrian asylum seeker killed a woman and injured four others with a deli knife in Reutlingen, in what investigators say was not an act of terrorism. Three of them were perpetrated by recent immigrants, reigniting debate over how Germany should deal with the 1.1 million migrants who arrived in the country in 2015.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has ordered beefed up security at transportation hubs and elsewhere.
Addressing the French people directly, he said: “I owe you the truth – this war will be long”.
Terrorists affiliated with or inspired by the Islamic State group have hit airports in Brussels, Belgium and Istanbul; cafes in Nice, France, and a train in Wurzburg, Germany.
His Bavarian counterpart has said the Ansbach suicide bomber detonated a backpack device after being refused entry to the festival in the southern city.
Fifteen people were injured in the suicide explosion, according to the latest information provided by police.
The stabbing attack in Wurzburg, which authorities said appeared motivated by ISIS propaganda, has left four people hospitalized, including one in an induced coma, medical officials said.
“I believe that after this video we can not doubt that this attack was an Islamist terror attack”, Herrmann said.
Constant attacks have shocked Germany. On July 23, a 18-year-old German-Iranian killed nine people, a lot of them teenagers, in a shooting rampage in Munich before taking his own life. A 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker was shot and killed by police as he fled the scene.
It could be “a combination of both”, De Maiziere added.
Police said neither Sunday’s machete attack nor Friday’s shooting in Munich bore any sign of connections with IS or other militant groups.
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The ISIS-affiliated media group Amaq claimed the attacker was an ISIS “soldier” in a statement the group’s supporters posted online Monday, but there is no evidence he was in contact with ISIS or directed to carry out an attack.
