The incident, after three other attacks since July 18 that have left 10 people dead and dozens injured, has fueled growing public unease about Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy.
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Another attack on July 24 in the city of Reutlingen claimed the life of a Polish woman.
Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said on Monday that security officials found a video on the attacker’s mobile phone that captured his pledge of allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State militant group.
Islamic State, via its Aamaq News Agency mouthpiece’s channels on the Telegram messaging app, said the bomber was one of its “soldiers” and was responding to its call to target members of an global coalition fighting it.
Three of the attacks were carried out by recent immigrants, rekindling concerns about Germany’s ability to cope with the estimated 1 million migrants registered entering the country previous year.
The 27-year-old, who had spent a stint in a psychiatric facility, had meant to target a music festival in the city of Ansbach but was turned away because he did not have a ticket.
He was facing imminent deportation to Bulgaria, where he was first registered within the European Union as an asylum seeker and which had granted his claim, a German interior ministry spokesman said.
In the other attack, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker wounded five people with an axe before being killed by police near the Bavarian city of Wuerzburg.
The bombing followed a shooting spree at a shopping center in Munich on Friday, in which an 18-year-old man shot dead nine people before killing himself.
People who knew the terrorist said that he suffered from suicidal tendencies and was a compulsive liar.
Aamaq later published what it said was a video of the attacker. And Sonboly, who was not an asylum seeker at all, proudly claimed to have been born in Germany.
Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Monday that Germany’s justice system is strong and that security would be tightened in public spaces via increased police presence.
ISIS said he was a “soldier of Islamic State” and describe the attack as a “martyrdom operation”.
Named locally as Mohammad Daleel, the bomber – nicknamed “Rambo” by friends – blew himself up outside a German music festival.
The explosion came as Germany, and the southern state of Bavaria in particular, have been on edge. However, the bomber was refused entry into an Ansbach music festival where roughly 2500 people were in attendance. “But then people came past and said it was a rucksack that had exploded”.
“And for most of the people it doesn’t matter if most of these attacks were caused by foreigners who’ve long lived in Germany or are refugees – they attribute this all to the refugees”, said Jaeger, who added that the pro-refugee sentiment in Germany from a year ago had all but disappeared, and that Merkel will surely be blamed for the string of attacks.
One resident there said he had occasionally drunk coffee with the attacker and they had discussed religion.
It was the fourth attack to shake Germany in a week – three of them carried out by recent migrants.
Constant attacks have shocked Germany.
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Failure to uphold immigration laws ends up giving migrants the impression that “they can get away with anything”, Schuster said.
