In Sunday’s attack, the assailant detonated a backpack bomb near the entrance of the music festival in southern Germany after he was refused entry, officials said. He was known to police in Ansbach, where the attack occurred, for drug-related crimes.
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Authorities said he was a 27-year-old Syrian known to police who entered Germany two years ago.
“My personal view is that I unfortunately think it’s very likely this really was an Islamist suicide attack”, Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann told German news agency dpa.
The man had previously attempted suicide twice and had been in psychiatric treatment, officials said. A few people came running towards us who had been near the cafe….
“Herrmann told Reuters the recent attacks raised serious questions about Germany’s asylum law and security nationwide”. He planned to introduce measures at a meeting of Bavaria’s conservative government on Tuesday to strengthen police forces, in part by ensuring they have adequate equipment. Bavaria’s top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the…
The attack was carried out by “one of the soldiers of the Islamic State”, the extremist group said. “The obvious intention to kill more people indicates an Islamist connection”.
“It was the second violent incident in Germany on Sunday and the fourth in the past week, including the killing of nine people by a deranged 18-year-old Iranian-German gunman in the Bavarian capital Munich on Friday”.
In this case, the bomber was given an apartment in Ansbach after being granted temporary leave to remain in Germany as a result of the Syrian civil war. His asylum request was denied, but he had been allowed to stay in the country because of the situation in Syria.
The attacker “announced in the name of Allah that he pledged allegiance to [IS chief] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi… and announced an act of revenge against Germans because they were standing in the way of Islam”, Mr Hermann said.
The attack took place at the Ansbach Open festival, where an audience of about 2,500 was present. The explosion was fatal to the bomber itself, his detonating device was packed into hid rucksack, said one of the witness.
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. “I didn’t know what to do at the first time, so I just followed them, you know, because I had no clue what’s going on”.
That attack came after a refugee from Pakistan wielding an axe injured five people near Wuerzbuerg, also in southern Germany, before he was shot dead by police on July 18.
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The Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière has warned against “general suspicions” towards refugees, adding that it is too early to decide on eventual changes to Germany’s refugee policy.
