An Afghanistan asylum seeker crushed a mini-cooper in a union demonstration in Munich on Thursday, injuring more than two dozen people and adding growing tensions around immigration before the German Chancellor’s election next week.
Authorities believe that the 10:30 am accident was a deliberate attack by the 24 -year -old, said Markus Söder, the Governor of Bavaria, the state of which Munich is the capital. The police said that the car had exceeded a police cruiser who accompanied the demonstration and entered the crowd. The police pulled a shot by stopping man.
The accident site was less than one mile from the Munich security conference, which opens tomorrow and attracts high -level participants and journalists around the world. Police do not think the accident was linked to the conference.
Germany is in shock from a series of apparently independent attacks by immigrants from Afghanistan and the Middle East in the past year. The memories are still cool of a car writing attack in December, when a man led to a Christmas market in Magdeburg, in central Germany, injuring up to 300 people and killing six.
Last month, an Afghan immigrant with an apparent mental illness that was planned for deportation killed a young child and an adult in a knife attack in a Bavarian park.
The main parties of the Chancellor’s elections, scheduled for February 23, have all promised to repress migrants to various degrees – notably the extreme right alternative for the German party, known as AFD, which is found Second in the polls, and conservative Christian Democrats, which should end first.
Some political initiates speculated Thursday that the attack could still raise AFD, which exceeded 20% in the polls, by focusing the voters even more on migration problems.
There were similar expectations that the January attack in Bavaria will attract more voters to AFD, a party that has long been avoided by all other parties in Parliament and parties that are classified as extremists by German intelligence . But no rebound in this type was materialized.
The allies of the candidate of Christian Democrats for the Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said Thursday that they did not expect him to lose supporters at AFD following the attack. They cited Mr. Merz’s decision last month, following the Bavarian knife attack, to push a set of newly restrictive migration members to a vote in the Parliament.
This decision was aimed at showing voters that Mr. Merz and his party are serious to act to reduce migration and respond to public security concerns. But this has aroused indignation in the Bundestag, the Federal Parliament, and the demonstrations across the country, because Mr. Merz has indeed broken a taboo of several decades in German politics against work with parties considered extreme. This is because Mr. Merz continued the measures knowing that they could only pass with AFD votes.
Mr. Merz managed to adopt a symbolic measure, but a second vote, on the modifications of the Migration Act, failed, with several members of the Merz party defect.
However, some of Mr. Merz’s allies suggested Thursday that the episode had actually inoculated him, him and the Christian Democrats, against the demands of not responding to voters on migration.
The political risks of the attack could be higher for the Chancellor in the besieged exercise, Olaf Scholz, whose social democrats question in the third or fourth surveys.
Mr. Scholz adopted a more measured approach to migration in the countryside. But on Thursday, he offered an aggressive response to the attack that underlined how much the subject of migration – in particular Afghanistan and Syria – has become.
The driver “must be punished and he must leave the country,” said Scholz, who has trouble connecting with the voters and should not be re -elected Chancellor during a campaign stop at Fürth.
Mr. Scholz was to participate Thursday evening in a televised debate with the three other CHANCELIERS of the leading Chancellors: Mr. MERZ, Alice Weidel of AFD and Robert HABECK of the Green Party. Migration was already to be a controversial subject, but the attack has further increased its salience.
The photographs and videos of the accident site showed a seriously bumpy beige Cooper on Thursday, which, according to witnesses, was conducted in the crowd.
A rescue helicopter and several ambulances were on site to bring the victims – at least 28 were injured, including two severely – in the hospital.
Sandra Demmelhuber, journalist for Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Bavarian public broadcaster, was on the crash site and described a chaotic scene.
“There is a person lying on the street and a young man was taken by police. People seated, cried and trembled on the ground, “she Written on x.
The demonstration had been organized by Verdi, one of the largest German unions, who had called a one -day strike for city workers. About 2,500 people were at the rally when the accident took place.
Police confirmed that the man they have apprehended was known to be involved in minor crimes, such as display and drug flight.
The man would have failed in his request for asylum, but had an official status which allowed him to stay in the country at least temporarily, according to Joachim Herrmann, Minister of the Interior of the State of Bavaria. Beyond these details, however, it was not publicly identified.
The attack occurred the day the trial opened its doors for an Afghan who is accused of having stabbed a police officer to death and hurt several others in Mannheim last spring.
After the accident on Thursday, Mr. Söder – whose Christian Social Union, a regional sister party of Christian Democrats, has ruled Bavaria for decades – has not lost time to call for action.
“It was not the first act of this type,” said Söder on the accident site. “Today, I feel compassion for people, but at the same time, I am determined that something should change in Germany and quickly,” he added.
