German police killed a man who opened fire near the Israeli consulate general in Munich on Thursday, the anniversary of the hostage-taking of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in the Bavarian capital.
On X, Israeli President Isaac Herzog “expressed his horror” at what he called a “terrorist attack.”
The German authorities, for their part, are more cautious, stressing that “the suspect’s motives” still need to be clarified.
“The man was moving with a long weapon and fired several shots” before the police opened fire on him, the Interior Minister of the regional state of Bavaria, Joachim Hermann, told reporters.
His act “could” be linked, according to him, to the proximity of the Israeli consulate, a documentation center on Nazism and the fact that it took place on the anniversary of the bloody hostage-taking of September 5, 1972.
During this attack committed by a Palestinian commando, eleven Israeli athletes were killed, as well as a policeman and five hostage-takers.
The shooter was spotted with his weapon in his hand by law enforcement officers who were monitoring sensitive buildings in the neighborhood. According to the police, he opened fire, before these officers returned fire and fatally wounded him.
The case comes amid a tense situation in Germany, which, like many countries around the world, has seen a resurgence of anti-Semitism since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, which triggered the war in Gaza.
“As things stand, none of the witnesses have given any information about other perpetrators, so we assume that the situation as it currently stands is resolved,” Hermann said.
– “Very serious act” –
The incident began at around 09:00 local time (10:00 GMT). Munich police cordoned off the entire area around the National Socialism Documentation Center and the Israeli consulate and sent a helicopter to support the operation.
According to police, the weapon used by the suspect was an old model.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called it a “very serious act” and said that “the protection of Jewish and Israeli establishments is an absolute priority.”
Due to the situation, a ceremony commemorating the victims of the 1972 hostage-taking in Fürstenfeldbruck, where the Israeli athletes were shot, was cancelled.
Asked by AFP, the Nazi documentation center confirmed by email that a police intervention had taken place, but declined to make further comments.
Built in 2015, the centre, called NS-Doku in German, is located in the former “Brown House”, the headquarters of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP).
Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, the increase in anti-Jewish crimes has been a particular cause for concern in Germany, a country which, because of the Holocaust, has elevated support for Israel to the status of a reason of state.
A record number of 5,164 anti-Semitic crimes were recorded in 2023, compared to 2,641 in 2022, according to internal intelligence.
One of the most prominent anti-Semitic attacks in post-war Germany, however, occurred in 2019: two people were killed after a neo-Nazi attempted to storm a synagogue in Halle, in the former GDR, on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany estimates that there are around 100,000 practicing Jews in the country and around 100 synagogues.
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