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.
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.
“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.”
Alternative for Germany’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, posted on social network X: “Is this supposed to carry on forever? Migration turnaround now!”
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.
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.