Lucy Clarke-Billings
BBC News
Getty Images
A 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker drove a car into a crowd in the German city of Munich on Thursday, injuring at least 30 people, police have said.
Officers said they were treating the incident as a suspected attack.
Here’s what we know about the attack so far.
What happened?
Munich police said the car, a Mini Cooper, accelerated and ploughed into the back of a rally by the Verdi trade union during a strike by public sector workers. It happened in Munich’s city centre at the junction of Karlstrasse and Seidlstrasse at about 10:30 local time (11:30 GMT).
Employees of day-care centres, hospitals, sanitation facilities and public swimming pools had joined the strike, calling for higher pay and longer holidays.
At the time of the collision around 1,500 people were on their way to the rally’s final location a short distance away.
One shot was fired at the vehicle by police before the driver was detained at the scene.
Emergency services had been in the area because of the rally allowing the suspect to be quickly arrested and for the injured to be treated, police said.
It is unclear whether the suspect was injured.
A police spokesman told local public broadcaster BR that police were checking whether there was a link between the demonstration and the incident.
The crash happened hours before the US vice president and Ukrainian president were due to arrive in the city for the Munich Security Conference – but police say they don’t believe it’s related.
How many were injured?
At least 30 people were injured, including two seriously, German police said on Thursday.
The local fire service said some of those hurt were in a “life-threatening condition”.
Munich’s mayor Dieter Reiter said children were among those injured.
According to Bavarian media, injured people were being treated at multiple hospitals around Munich, including a children’s hospital and the Munich Red Cross Clinic.
Some of the injured included employees of the Munich city administration, Munich’s deputy mayor Dominik Krause said.
Several participants at the trade union rally had brought their children with them, “which makes the act even more heinous”, Krause said.
Who is the suspect?
The suspect, Farhad N, who we are not fully naming due to German privacy rules, is a 24-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan.
He resides in Munich, German police said, adding that his motive was unclear.
“It was probably an attack,” Bavaria state premier Markus Söder told reporters.
Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann said the suspect had his asylum application rejected, but he had not been forced to leave due to security concerns in Afghanistan.
He later clarified that the suspect had a valid residence and work permit and that everything about him was legitimate.
According to the the German Press Agency, the suspect came to Germany in 2016 as a minor.
Herrmann said initially that the suspect had been known to police but later explained that he had previously worked as a store detective and had been a witness in several cases of shoplifting.
Bavarian state premier Markus Söder told German TV that counter-terrorism officials had taken over the inquiry but “previous extremist backgrounds are not so easily recognisable at first glance”.
The suspect was due to appear in court on Friday.
What have witnesses said?
The BBC’s Daniel Wittenberg, reporting from Munich, said there was a pram strewn across the floor at the scene, as well as half a dozen umbrellas and high-vis jackets.
A severely damaged white Mini Cooper could be seen at a pedestrian crossing in the middle of three lanes of traffic which had been cordoned off by police.
A woman working at an orthopaedic shop on the road where the incident took place told the BBC that half a dozen people came running into the shop.
“They looked panicked, and some people were crying,” she said.
Pedestrians reportedly sprinted for cover in shops and residential buildings that line either side of the thoroughfare.
One student, who didn’t wanted to give her name, said the driver of the Mini Cooper accelerated before hitting the crowd.
“It was fast enough to pull 10 to 15 people to the ground,” another witness said.
What have authorities said?
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the suspect “must be punished” and “must leave the country”.
“This perpetrator cannot hope for any leniency,” he told reporters, in a translation from Reuters news agency.
“If it was an attack, we must take consistent action against possible perpetrators with all means of justice.”
Markus Söder said authorities were working to “clarify all the details”.
“This is not the first case and who knows what else will happen,” he added.
“It is now even more important that, in addition to the processing of individual cases, in addition to the concern that we all feel, in addition to the sympathy and in addition to the great hope that many will recover, we also show the determination that something must change in Germany.”
