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Police in Munich shot and killed an armed man on Thursday outside the city’s Israeli consulate and Holocaust museum, on the anniversary of the 1972 Olympic Games terror attacks in the city.
No others were injured in the shootout, the details of which are urgently being investigated by security authorities.
“It is a serious incident,” said interior minister Nancy Faeser, speaking in Berlin. “The protection of Jewish and Israeli institutions is the highest priority.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he had spoken to Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier by telephone after the incident, which he described as an attempted act of terror.
“Together we expressed our shared condemnation and horror at the terror attack this morning near the Israeli consulate in Munich,” he said in a post on X. “I want to thank the German security services for their swift action, and send my support to all those targeted.”
German police have so far declined to comment on the motives of the gunman, who they identified as an 18 year old Austrian.
Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann said the man had been seen carrying an automatic weapon by police stationed in the city’s university district at about 9am.
“He deliberately shot at police officers, who returned fire,” said Herrmann, adding that the evidence pointed to the incident being a failed antisemitic terror attack. The teenager parked his car by the Israeli consulate and walked around the building before opening fire, he said, which was “not a coincidence”.
The incident took place in the vicinity of the Nazi documentation centre, a museum and archive dedicated to the Holocaust, and the Israeli General Consulate, which are close to each other just off Karolinenplatz.
The man was seriously injured in the shootout and later died of his wounds.
German authorities are on high alert barely two weeks after a deadly Islamist terror attack in Solingen left three dead and many more injured.
That attack, perpetrated by a 26-year-old Syrian man who was living illegally in Germany after his asylum application was rejected, has triggered a renewed political debate over Germany’s immigration policy and the powers available to police to curb political violence.
For months police have been particularly vigilant over the threat to Germany’s Jewish community, with antisemitism on the rise across the country, fuelled by hardline Islamists and right-wing extremists.
The shooting on Thursday occurred on a particularly sensitive day in Munich as the city commemorates the terror attack at the Olympic Games it hosted in 1972, in which Palestinian gunmen murdered 11 Israelis and a German policeman.
The Israeli consulate in Munich was closed at the time of the incident due to the anniversary of the attack, said the Consul General of the State of Israel for Southern Germany, Talya Lador-Fresher.
“This event shows how dangerous the rise of antisemitism is,” she said. “It is important that the general public raises its voice against it.”