After the exchange of fire near the Israeli Consulate General in Munich, investigators believe that the dead shooter attempted a terrorist attack. According to current information, the attack by the 18-year-old Austrian armed with a rifle has a “connection to the Consulate General of the State of Israel,” the Munich police and public prosecutor’s office said.
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Police discovered the man armed with an older carbine and bayonet in Maxvorstadt on Thursday morning at around 9 a.m. According to Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, he deliberately shot at the police officers, who returned fire. According to a police spokesman, five officers were involved in the exchange of fire.
The investigations, led by the Central Office for Combating Extremism and Terrorism, are therefore focusing on the young man’s exact motive. He was seriously injured in the shootout with the police and died at the scene. As a result of the incident, around 500 police officers were deployed in Munich city center, including special forces. Apart from the shooter, no one was injured, according to the police.
“The background to the crime still needs to be clarified,” said Herrmann. However, “if someone parks here within sight of the Israeli Consulate General, then walks around the Consulate General with a gun and starts shooting,” that is “certainly or with high probability not a coincidence.”
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Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder spoke of a serious suspicion in view of the simultaneous anniversary of the Olympic attack in Munich. “There may be a connection. It still needs to be clarified,” said the CSU politician near the crime scene.
In the terrorist attack at the Olympic Games in Munich on September 5, 1972, Palestinian terrorists shot two men and took nine hostages in the Olympic Village. Around 18 hours later, a rescue attempt ended with the deaths of the nine Israeli hostages, a police officer and five of the attackers.
According to the Austrian police, the young man from Salzburg was investigated last year on suspicion that he had become religiously radicalized and was interested in explosives and weapons. The man with Bosnian roots was banned from carrying weapons.
The then 17-year-old had come to the attention of the authorities after threatening classmates and causing bodily harm. In this context, he was accused of involvement in a terrorist organization, it was said. According to information from the Austrian news agency APA, propaganda from the terrorist organization Islamic State was found on his cell phone. However, the Salzburg public prosecutor’s office closed the investigation in April 2023, police said. Since then, the 18-year-old has not come to the attention of the police again.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) wrote on Platform X: “The rapid reaction of the emergency services in Munich may have prevented something atrocitable from happening today. … I say it very clearly: anti-Semitism and Islamism have no place here.”
According to police, the 18-year-old was hit at around 9:12 a.m. After just a few minutes, he was no longer able to defend himself, said Munich Police Chief Thomas Hampel. Within a very short time, around 500 police officers were deployed in the city center, as Bavaria’s Interior Minister Herrmann reported. According to the police, this also included special forces and a helicopter. The area around the consulate was cordoned off for hours.
Austria subsequently increased its own security measures. The state security agency DSN has therefore already contacted the Israeli embassy and the Israeli religious community, said Interior Minister Gerhard Karner. “The Austrian security authorities are in intensive contact with their German colleagues.”
Thanks came from all sides for the Munich police forces, including from Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD): “The quick and decisive reaction of the Munich police today stopped an attacker and possibly prevented a terrorist act of violence. We owe the emergency services our great thanks and respect.”
Israel’s President Izchak Herzog spoke of a “terrorist attack this morning near the Israeli consulate in Munich” and condemned the act. He thanked the German security services for their quick intervention, Herzog wrote on the X platform after a telephone conversation with Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The President of the Israelite Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, Charlotte Knobloch, said: “The feeling of insecurity, not only in the Jewish community, will become even more entrenched after this incident. The task for those politically responsible is therefore very clear: violent extremism must be pushed back out of public spaces; anything else would be the end of our open society.”
The Consulate General in Munich was closed at the time of the incident due to the commemoration of the anniversary of the Olympic attack, wrote the Consul General of the State of Israel for Southern Germany, Talya Lador-Fresher, on the X platform. “This event shows how dangerous the rise of anti-Semitism is. It is important that the general public raises its voice against it.”
