🍃At least 28 people have been injured after a car rammed into a crowd of people in Munich. As per German police, the incident occurred near the city's central train station.
🦂Taking to social media platform X, the police said that the driver was “secured” at the scene and no longer poses any danger.
🐠 As per the latest update, 28 people have been injured due to the incident, with two people seriously injured.
According to The Associated Press📖, the incident took place at 10:30 AM local time when the participants in a demonstration by the service workers' union ver.di were walking along a street. The car reportedly overtook a police vehicle, 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. As per Munich Police, the driver was a 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker. An investigation has been launched to determine the motive behind the incident.
🅷The Munich Security Conference is set to begin on Friday, with US Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky due to arrive in Germany this afternoon. However, it remains unclear if the incident was related to this conference.
Recent Similar Incidents
🎀The Munich incident comes three weeks after a two-year-old boy and a man were killed in a knife attack in Aschaffenburg, also in Bavaria. An Afghan whose asylum application was rejected was the suspect in that attack, which propelled migration to the center of the German election campaign.
🌃The Aschaffenburg attack followed knife attacks in Mannheim and Solingen last year in which the suspects were immigrants from Afghanistan and Syria, respectively — in the latter case, also a rejected asylum-seeker who was supposed to have left the country.
🔥In the December Christmas market car ramming in Magdeburg, the suspect was a Saudi doctor who previously had come to various regional authorities' attention.
Demands For Political Consequences
﷽Germany's main opposition conservative bloc has demanded a tougher approach to irregular migration, calling for many more people to be turned back at the border and for an increase in deportations. Curbing migration is also a core issue for the far-right Alternative for Germany, which polls put in second place behind the conservatives.
𒉰“This is more evidence that we can't go from attack to attack and show dismay, thank police for their deployment," Soder 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!”
ꦛCentre-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government said it already has done a lot to reduce irregular migration, and that the opposition's plans are incompatible with German and European Union law.
🗹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.
(With AP inputs)
