This morning, at around 10.30 local time, a white Mini Cooper ploughed into a crowd of more than 1,000 people in central Munich, south Germany. According to the local authorities, at least 28 people have been injured, with several suffering life-threatening injuries, including a child. Pictures from the scene show a battered car, with a smashed windscreen, surrounded by debris and discarded first aid material.
According to Bavarian police, the driver of the car, who was arrested at the scene, is a 24-year-old Afghan failed asylum seeker. The man is reportedly known to the police and has a history of drug and theft-related offenses. The German newspaper Der Spiegel is reporting that the driver of the car applied for asylum after arriving in the country in 2016. His deportation from the country was reportedly suspended – although no explanation is given as to why that might have been.
Bavaria’s state president Markus Söder has claimed that ‘it is suspected of being an attack’. The Munich public prosecutor’s office has taken on the investigation and stated that ‘indications of an extremist background’. The car drove into a picket line made up of city authority employees belonging to the union Verdi who had been protesting about their working conditions. The incident comes before the Munich Security Conference, which starts tomorrow, although authorities have denied a connection between the events.
This is the second time in less than four weeks that Bavaria has been subjected to a mass casualty incident allegedly carried out by a foreign-born assailant. On 22 January, a 28-year-old failed asylum seeker from Afghanistan attacked a playgroup in a park in Aschaffenburg, killing two people and injuring three others. In December, a car driven by a Saudi migrant rammed into a crowd at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt. Six people were killed and 299 injured.
With only ten days until Germany heads to the polls for its federal election, today’s incident means that the topic of migration will remain at the front and centre of the campaign. With crime by foreign-born perpetrators on the rise in the country, and Germans reporting feeling increasingly unsafe, this latest tragedy will reinforce for many the sense that the country’s politicians and authorities have lost their grip on domestic security.
Both the conservative CDU and far-right AfD have pledged strict border crackdowns and the deportation of illegal migrants in response to the attacks in Magdeburg and Aschaffenburg. While the details of today’s incident remain hazy for the time being, it will likely trigger a fresh wave of anger and fear from the public. This will concern many of the politicians worried about the rise of the AfD, who have capitalised on the issue of migration in particular, linking it to many of the country’s social and economic problems.
As with the aftermath of the attacks in Magdeburg and Aschaffenburg, over the coming days we can expect Germany’s politicians to indulge in an exercise of finger-pointing: while domestic security is a federal responsibility controlled from Berlin, the individual states – in this case Bavaria and Söder’s administration – are in charge of keeping track and deporting failed asylum claimants. With that in mind, Germany’s politicians have until next Sunday to convince their voters that they have what it takes to get a grip on the situation and put a stop to yet more tragedy unfolding over the coming months and years.
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