Afghan asylum seeker deliberately rammed a crowd in what authorities call a suspected act of “Islamic extremism”
A 37-year-old woman and her 2-year-old daughter have died from injuries sustained in a car-ramming attack in Munich, authorities confirmed on Saturday. The victims were among at least 39 people injured when a vehicle, driven by a 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, plowed into a labor union demonstration.
The incident occurred on Thursday, just ahead of the Munich Security Conference. The suspect, identified by local media as Farhad N., was arrested on 36 counts of attempted murder, grievous bodily harm, and reckless driving.
“Unfortunately, we have to confirm the deaths today of the two-year-old child and her 37-year-old mother,” police spokesman Ludwig Waldinger told AFP on Saturday.
During interrogation, the suspect allegedly admitted to deliberately driving into the crowd. According to senior public prosecutor Gabriele Tilmann, the suspect acted for “religious reasons,” and authorities are treating the incident as an extremism-motivated attack.
“We don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but given what has happened, we assume this was an Islamic extremist attack,” Tilmann told a press conference on Friday, adding that the suspect shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great in Arabic) when he was detained. “I can’t say more about it, but his statements suggest a religious motive.”
Tilmann said there is no evidence so far that the suspect was affiliated with any terrorist organization or had accomplices. A search of his apartment did not reveal any indication that he specifically targeted the union rally or that the attack was linked to the security conference, held less than two kilometers away.
The suspect had legal residency in Germany after arriving in 2016 as an unaccompanied minor. Munich police stated that he had no prior convictions and was only known to authorities “from investigations in which he was a witness.”
In a similar attack in December, a 50-year-old Saudi doctor drove his car into a Christmas market crowd in Magdeburg, killing five and injuring over 200. The Munich attack marks the fifth incident involving immigrants in Germany over the past nine months, according to AP, further fueling debate on migration policies ahead of the federal election on February 23.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the attack scene on Saturday, placing a white rose at an improvised memorial. He condemned the act, stating that the perpetrator “must be punished and must leave the country.”
In a separate incident on Saturday, a 14-year-old boy was fatally stabbed in Villach, Austria, by a 23-year-old Syrian asylum seeker with legal residency. “I am angry – angry at those politicians who have allowed stabbings, rapes, gang wars, and other capital crimes to become the order of the day in Austria,” said right-wing leader Herbert Kickl, whose Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) won 28% of the vote in September’s elections but has so far failed to form a coalition government.
