By dpa correspondents I Thursday, Sept. 05, 2024
BERLIN – An 18-year-old Austrian was on Thursday shot dead after opening fire at police officers near the Israeli consulate in Munich, authorities said.
Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann did not rule out the possibility that the suspect was targeting the Israeli consulate.
The shooting took place on the anniversary of a terrorist attack by Palestinian militants in Munich which claimed the lives of 11 Israelis during the 1972 Olympic Games.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry told dpa that none of its employees were harmed, as the consulate was closed for a memorial service to remember the victims of the attack.
None of the five officers involved in the shooting sustained injuries, police said.
In Berlin, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser described the shooting as a “serious incident.”
“I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Munich police, who, in my view, are doing a good job,” said Faeser. “The protection of Jewish and Israeli institutions, as you know, has the highest priority.”
Israeli president thanks Munich police
Authorities are yet to confirm that the attack was directly targeted at the Israeli consulate or linked to the anniversary of the Munich massacre.
Bavarian premier Markus Söder said “a connection may have been made” but that it would “need to be clarified.”
“Munich held its breath for a moment today,” he added.
Israeli authorities were quick to condemn the incident, with Talya Lador-Fresher, Israel’s Consul General in Munich, posting on the social media platform X that the shooting “shows how dangerous the rise of anti-Semitism is.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also shared his “condemnation and horror” and thanked Munich police after a phone call with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
“On the day our brothers and sisters in Munich were set to stand in remembrance of our brave athletes murdered by terrorists 52 years ago, a hate-fuelled terrorist came and once again sought to murder innocent people,” Herzog said.
On September 5, 1972, a group of Palestinian terrorists took 11 members of the Israeli team hostage at Munich’s Olympic village in an attempt to secure the release of 230 Palestinians in Israeli custody.
In the course of events, all 11 hostages were killed, mostly in a botched rescue attempt by German security forces. Five of the eight Palestinian terrorists were also killed.
Investigation under way
As reports of a shooting emerged on Thursday morning, police launched a major operation in central Munich, with helicopters deployed and roadblocks set up at the scene around Karolinenplatz, near the Israeli consulate and the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism.
The area was cordoned off by police and residents warned to stay away from the scene.
Police initially confirmed on X that officers had fired several shots at a “suspicious person,” as reports of the incident emerged on social media.
It later emerged that the man was armed with an old model of a repeating rifle.
An investigation into the shooting is now under way, with Bavarian Justice Minister Georg Eisenreich saying it was being led by a counter-terrorism unit at the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office.
