“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.
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Police said the man meant to target the open-air festival but was turned away as he did not have a ticket, and detonated the device outside a nearby cafe.
The so-called Dublin principle observed by many countries determines that asylum seekers who have passed through a safe third country where they could have claimed asylum can be sent back there in order to make their claim.
Mr Hermann said: “The obvious intention to kill more people indicates an Islamist connection”.
It comes after a week that has seen four violent attacks in the country, three of them allegedly perpetrated by recently arrived asylum seekers. A few hours before the bomb went off in Ansbach, a Syrian refugee in Reutlingen killed one woman, injuring two more people when he attacked passers-by with a machete.
Authorities found a video on the bomber’s phone showing him pledging his allegiance to ISIS shortly after the attack. The Interior Ministry added that it did not have concrete evidence yet to show links to extremist groups.
The man, a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum in Germany, killed himself and injured twelve others when he set off a bomb outside a crowded music festival in Ansbach, a small town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg.
The bomber’s hotel, which was being used as a refugee shelter, was searched by police early Monday.
The IS-linked Aamaq news agency said the man carried out the attack in response to calls by the group to target countries of the US -led coalition that is fighting IS.
The attack is the fourth in less than a week in Germany.
Three of the 12 people injured in the Ansbach attack have been released from hospital, the BR24 broadcaster reported citing the ANregiomed hospital group.
Reuters is reporting that German authorities refused to grant the attacker asylum previous year, and that the incident happened in Ansbach, a town that is “also home to a U.S. Army base”. Police said that he had planned the attack for a year.
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The two teens, both loners who played a lot of first-person shooter games, had met while receiving inpatient psychiatric care last summer and had exchanged messages discussing their fantasies of going on rampages, officials said.
