BERLIN (AP) — A driver drove a car into a labor union demonstration in central Munich on Thursday, injuring at least 28 people including children, authorities said. Officials said it was believed to be an attack.
The suspect, an Afghan asylum-seeker, was arrested. The incident follows a series of attacks involving immigrants in recent months that have pushed migration to the forefront of the campaign for Germany’s Feb. 23 election.
Participants in a demonstration by the service workers’ union ver.di were walking along a street at about 10:30 a.m. when the car overtook a police vehicle following the gathering, accelerated and plowed into the back of the group, police said.
Officers arrested the suspect after firing a shot at the car, deputy police chief Christian Huber said. He added that at least 28 people were believed to be injured, some of them seriously. A damaged Mini was seen at the scene, along with debris including shoes.
The suspect was a 24-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker, Huber said. Bavaria’s state interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said the man was known to authorities in connection with theft and drug offenses, but didn't give further details. He said officials believe the protest was likely targeted at random.
The state’s justice minister, Georg Eisenreich, said a prosecutors’ department that investigates extremism and terror was looking into the case.
“We feel with the victims, we are praying for the victims — we hope very much that they all make it," Bavarian governor Markus Söder told reporters at the scene.
“It is suspected to be an attack — a lot points to that," Söder added.
Mayor Dieter Reiter said that children were among those injured.
A string of recent attacks
The Munich incident comes three weeks after a two-year-old boy and a man were killed in a knife attack in Aschaffenburg, also in Bavaria. An Afghan whose asylum application was rejected was the suspect in that attack, which propelled migration to the center of the German election campaign.
The Aschaffenburg attack followed knife attacks in Mannheim and Solingen last year in which the suspects were immigrants from Afghanistan and Syria, respectively — in the latter case, also a rejected asylum-seeker who was supposed to have left the country.
In the December Christmas market car ramming in Magdeburg, the suspect was a Saudi doctor who previously had come to various regional authorities’ attention.
Demands for political consequences
Germany's main opposition conservative bloc, in which Söder is a prominent figure, has demanded a tougher approach to irregular migration, calling for many more people to be turned back at the border and for an increase in deportations. Curbing migration is also a core issue for the far-right Alternative for Germany, which polls put in second place behind the conservatives.
“This is more evidence that we can't go from attack to attack and show dismay, thank police for their deployment," Söder said. “This is not the first such act ... We are determined that something must change in Germany, and quickly.”
Center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government said it already has done a lot to reduce irregular migration, and that the opposition's plans are incompatible with German and European Union law.
Scholz described the latest incident as “a terrible attack.”
“Anyone who commits crimes in Germany will not just be punished severely and have to go to prison, but must expect that he cannot continue his stay in Germany — and that also goes for countries that it is very difficult to send people back to,” he said.
The chancellor noted that his government deported convicted criminals to Afghanistan on a flight in August and is working to do so again — “and not just once, but continually.”
Herrmann said the Munich suspect's asylum application apparently had been rejected but it hadn't been possible to deport him.
The Bavarian capital will see heavy security in the coming days because the three-day Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of international foreign and security policy officials, opens on Friday.
Herrmann said authorities do not believe the car ramming was connected to the conference, but they still need to determine the motive.
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Stefanie Dazio in Berlin contributed to this report.
Geir Moulson, The Associated Press
