MUNICH (LifeSiteNews) — A 24-year-old Afghan man drove his car into a crowd in Munich, injuring at least 28 people, including children.
Around 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, the perpetrator drove a white Mini Cooper into a rally organized by the Verdi trade union on Seidlstraße, close to Munich’s central train station.
According to the vice president of the Munich Police, Christian Huber, the 24-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan drove behind the rally before overtaking a police car and driving full speed into the rear end of the demonstration. The police shot in the direction of the suspect and arrested him.
According to eyewitnesses, several injured people were lying under the car, which the perpetrator then tried in vain to accelerate again. After the attack, Seidlstraße was littered with debris and pieces of clothing.
According to the police, at least 28 people were injured in the attack, among them children. Bayerischer Rundfunk reports that one child had to be revived. The Münchner Merkur reports that a child is undergoing emergency surgery at the Dritter Orden Children’s Hospital and that a child in a life-threatening condition is being treated at another children’s hospital.
As reported by Der Spiegel, the perpetrator’s name is Farhad N. The Afghan was born in Kabul in 2001 and has been in Germany since 2016. He is said to have posted Islamist posts before the crime. He was known to police for the use of narcotics and shoplifting, but not violent crimes, according to Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Hermann (CSU). Hermann said the man’s asylum application was “apparently” rejected but “that he cannot be deported at the moment and was therefore allowed to stay in our country.”
“Enough is simply enough,” Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder said, stressing the need for something to change in Germany. “We cannot go from attack to attack.”
AfD leader Alice Weidel expressed her condolences to the victims and relatives on X and wrote: “Should this go on forever? Migration turnaround now!”
Germany has seen a wave of terrorist attacks and crimes carried out by migrants in the past years and months. Less than one month ago, another rejected asylum seeker from Afghanistan killed two people, among them a two-year-old boy, with a knife in Aschaffenburg. In December last year, a man from Saudi Arabia drove his car into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing at least two and injuring more than 60 people.
Germany will hold a federal election in 10 days after the leftist government coalition of Olaf Scholz fell apart last year. Immigration is going to be one of the most relevant voter motives, with the anti-globalist and anti-immigration AfD recently rising in the polls.