The Bavarian interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said a video was found on the man’s cell phone in which he professed allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and pledged to take revenge on Germans for killing Muslims.
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Germany is facing growing public uncertainty after Islamic State claimed as one of its “soldiers” the 27-year-old Syrian man who blew himself up with a nail bomb in Bavaria on Sunday evening.
A failed asylum-seeker from Syria blew himself up and wounded 12 people after being turned away from an open-air music festival in southern Germany in what officials said Monday may have been a suicide bombing.
The suicide bombing occurred during the Ansbach Open music festival in the city, which was taking place from Friday through Sunday and attracted many thousands of visitors.
The German government said Monday a terrorism link to the suicide bomb attack in southern Germany on Sunday night could not be ruled out, pledging to take measures to protect its citizens, while warning against suspicion against the overall group of refugees. Police say he was under psychiatric care and had tried to kill himself twice before. Fifteen were rushed to hospital with serious, though not life-threatening, injuries.
Meanwhile, The Associated Press reported from Beirut on Monday that the militant group had claimed responsibility for the attack.
Another Syrian refugee killed a pregnant woman and injured a man with a machete near the city of Reutlingen on Sunday. The axe-waving attacker in the July 18 assault had lived in Germany for more than a year, but had apparently received more influence from the IS group.
Armin Nassehi, a sociologist at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, said that among the 1 million asylum seekers who were registered in Germany a year ago, “there’s a big number of traumatized people who know nothing but violence that’s a fact one can not ignore”.
Merkel could now face increased calls for tighter border security and greater vetting of arrivals, even though the flow of migrants and asylum seekers has slowed drastically, said Florian Otto, an analyst with the risk consultants Verisk Maplecrof.
Just days before, nine people were shot and killed by 18-year-old Ali David Sonboly.
Welfare officials who dealt with Daleel in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 in Bavaria’s northern Franconia region, said he had been “friendly and nice”.
Germany accepted more than 1 million asylum seekers past year, and some Germans have expressed fears that terrorists might have entered the country among them, or that disaffected youths among the refugees could be susceptible to radicalization. The attacker, identified as an Iranian-German who was born and raised in Germany, had no apparent connection with a terror organization, police said.
The incidents, all connected to refugees, are expected to further feed the arguments in European countries that refugees are a source of increasing terrorism.
“It is more important that we not only accommodate and feed the people, but also determine who is coming to our country and see exactly whether they pose potential risks”, Wendt said. “We must do everything possible to prevent the spread of such violence in our country by people who came here to ask for asylum”.
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No evidence exists as of yet that the attack was directed by any known member of ISIS or an affiliate of ISIS in Germany.
