Key Points
- German police shot dead a gunman after he opened fire on them in an area near the Israeli consulate in Munich.
- Police said there were no indication of other suspects and no one else had been wounded in the attack.
- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Bavarian police “may have prevented something terrible from happening”.
German police shot dead a man in the city of Munich after he opened fire on them in an area near a museum on the city’s Nazi-era history and the Israeli consulate.
Officers were alerted to a person carrying a “long gun” in the Karolinenplatz area near downtown Munich on Thursday morning (local time).
Police identified the gunman, who died in a hail of police bullets after firing an old rifle fitted with a bayonet at them, as an 18-year-old Austrian.
Five officers were at the scene at the time the gunfire erupted.
The shootout sparked a mass mobilisation of about 500 personnel in downtown Munich, where residents and office workers huddled indoors as sirens wailed and a helicopter flew overhead.
Five police officers were at the scene in Munich at the time gunfire erupted. Source: AAP / Peter Kneffel/DPA
Austrian police, who later raided the gunman’s home, said the man had been investigated last year for possible “terrorist” links.
He had assaulted classmates and shown an online interest in explosives and weapons, they said, but prosecutors dropped the case in April 2023.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Bavarian police “may have prevented something terrible from happening”.
German interior minister Nancy Faeser said: “The quick and decisive reaction of the Munich police stopped an attacker today and possibly prevented a terrorist act of violence.”
It was unclear whether the incident was in any way related to the 52nd anniversary on Thursday of the attack by Palestinian militants on the Israeli delegation at the 1972 Munich Olympics, which ended with the death of 11 Israeli team members, a West German police officer and five of the assailants.
The shootout sparked a mobilisation of hundreds of police in downtown Munich, blocking off roads. Source: AAP / Matthias Schrader/AP
“This act took place in the immediate vicinity of the Israeli consulate general — on the anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Israeli Olympic team in 1972,” Faeser said.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog wrote on social media platform X that he had spoken with his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
“Together we expressed our shared condemnation and horror at the terror attack this morning near the Israeli consulate in Munich,” he wrote.
Israel’s foreign ministry said the consulate in Munich was closed when the shooting occurred and that none of its staff had been hurt.
The nearby Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, which opened in 2015 and explores the city’s past as the birthplace of the Nazi movement, also said all of its employees were unharmed.
After securing the scene, Munich police wrote on X that there were “no indications of any other suspects” and no one else had been wounded.
