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A 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker has driven a car into a trade union demonstration in Munich, injuring at least 28 people, German police have said, in a suspected attack that is expected to inflame tensions before this month’s election.
The car, a Mini Cooper, accelerated and ploughed into people at the back of a rally by the Verdi union at about 10.30am during a strike by public sector workers. Employees of daycare centres, hospitals, sanitation facilities and public swimming pools had joined the work stoppage calling for higher pay and longer holidays. More than 1,000 people were reportedly at the scene.
Among those hurt were children, and some of the victims had critical injuries. Media images showed the damaged car and several bodies lying on the ground, which was strewn with shoes and stained with blood.
At the height of a campaign for the 23 February election that has been dominated by fears around security and immigration, fuelling far-right support, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, condemned the car ramming as “terrible” and pledged a “no-tolerance” policy.
“This assailant cannot expect any leniency,” he told reporters. “He must be punished and then leave the country.”
Opposition leader Friedrich Merz said on X that as chancellor he would “impose law and order decisively”. “The security of people in Germany will be the top priority for us,” he said. “Everyone must feel safe again in our country. Something has got to change in Germany.”
Alice Weidel, co-leader of the anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD), called the incident “awful” and countered that Merz’s party colleagues in Bavaria were to blame for a “failure of state” by not deporting the suspect. While listing the most recent attacks, she said on X: “Should this continue for ever? An about-face on migration, now!”
The Bavarian capital had already begun implementing tighter security measures before the Munich Security Conference, starting on Friday, which will be attended by top officials from around the world including the US vice-president, JD Vance, and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Authorities said they did not believe the car ramming was connected to the conference.
The news website Spiegel said the suspect, identified only as Farhad N, had arrived in Germany seeking asylum in December 2016 and cited sources saying he had posted Islamist content on social media before the incident.
Bavaria’s state interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said the suspect was known to police in connection with theft and drug offences.
Police confirmed they had fired one shot while making the arrest but it was unclear whether the suspect was injured. “As reported, the secured person is the driver of the car,” police said on X. “Speculation is swirling about further people being involved. We cannot confirm that at this time.”
The Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported that one woman had died but authorities did not immediately comment.
The Munich mayor, Dieter Reiter, told the daily newspaper Bild: “The police chief just informed me that a vehicle drove into a group of people and unfortunately many were injured, including children. I am deeply shocked. My thoughts are with those hurt.”
Two months ago a car ramming at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg killed six people. Police arrested a Saudi doctor who had frequently expressed far-right sympathies on social media.
The Munich incident came as an Afghan man with suspected Islamist sympathies went on trial on charges of murder and attempted murder after a stabbing attack targeting a political rally last May in the western city of Mannheim. The defendant, identified by prosecutors as Sulaiman A, is accused of stabbing and seriously injuring six people, including a 29-year-old police officer who died of his injuries, during the attack on an anti-Islam demonstration.
In August, a 26-year-old Syrian asylum seeker with Islamist sympathies allegedly carried out a stabbing rampage at a festival in the western city of Solingen that left three dead and eight wounded.
Last month a 28-year-old Afghan man was arrested after a knife attack on children in a park in the southern city of Aschaffenburg, killing a two-year-old Moroccan boy and a 41-year-old German man who tried to intervene.
Scholz noted the difficulty of deporting Afghan nationals because Germany does not have diplomatic relations with the ruling Taliban. But he stressed his centre-left-led government had taken measures to ensure more suspects accused of violent crimes could be returned to the war-ravaged country.
During the election campaign, the centre-right and far right in particular have accused Scholz’s government of failing to stop immigrant crime, while Scholz has argued that the conservatives’ counterproposals would violate national and EU law.
In the aftermath of the Aschaffenburg attack, the election frontrunner, Merz of the conservative CDU/CSU alliance, pressed for hardline measures to turn back irregular migrants at the border. In what was widely criticised as a breach of a post-Nazi taboo, Merz said he was willing to accept the support of the far-right AfD to get the proposals through parliament.
The anti-Muslim AfD, which is under investigation as a suspected extremist organisation, is second in opinion polls at about 21%, behind the CDU/CSU on about 30%. All the mainstream parties have ruled out including the AfD in a governing coalition.
Sandra Demmelhuber, a journalist who had been reporting on the trade union strike in Munich, described shocked witnesses at the scene. “There is a person lying in the street and a young man was taken away by police,” she posted on X. “People are sitting crying and shaking on the ground. Details are still unclear.”
Another witness told local media that the Mini struck a woman with a child. “The mother and child were lying under the car.”
Claudia Weber, of the Verdi union, described the scene as “incomprehensible”. “We are completely shocked and are afraid for our colleagues who were at the march,” she said. “We heard that the car intentionally crashed into the demonstration. We hope no one will die.”
