Police arrested an Afghan asylum seeker at the scene of what German leaders labelled a car ramming "attack" that injured 28 people, some seriously, in the southern city of Munich Thursday.
The carnage came on the eve of a high-profile security conference in the Bavarian city and amid a heated immigration debate ahead of February 23 elections following a spate of similar attacks.
The vehicle, a Mini Cooper, barrelled into a demonstration held by trade unionists, leaving a trail of injured and their belongings scattered on the street, including a baby stroller.
Police who rushed to the scene fired a shot at the battered car and detained the driver, a 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who was named by German media as Farhad N.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the "awful" attack and promised severe consequences.
"From my point of view it is quite clear: this attacker cannot count on any mercy, he must be punished and he must leave the country," Scholz told reporters.
Your point of view, Olaf, is pathetic. You need to worry less about justice for the terrorist and more about preventing the next one. But, no, you would rather stonewall the AfD than do anything useful.
Shoes, glasses and the infant stroller were left littered in the wake of the suspected attack, which follows a deadly car rampage at a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg in December.
'Looked deliberate'
Alexa Graef, a witness, said she was "shocked" after seeing the car drive into the crowd, "which looked deliberate".
"I hope it's the last time I see anything like that," said Graef, whose office overlooked the junction where the incident happened.
Police inspected the cream-coloured Mini Cooper, leading sniffer dogs around the vehicle.
The 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, who lived in Munich, was arrested at the scene after law enforcement fired on the car once, but without hitting him, police said.
The authorities have "indications of an extremist motive" and the investigation has been handed over to the regional prosecutor's office, they added.
Earlier Thursday, a fire service spokesman told AFP that several of those hurt had been "seriously injured, some of them in a life-threatening condition".
The suspect was said to have arrived in Germany in 2016 at the height of the mass migrant influx to Europe.
His asylum request was reportedly rejected by German authorities, but he was not slated for deportation.
Bavaria state premier Markus Soeder told journalists that the incident was "just terrible" and that "it looks like this was an attack".
"This is not the first incident... we must show determination that something will change in Germany," said Soeder, whose CSU party is allied with the conservative CDU at the national level.
"This is further proof that we can't keep going from attack to attack," Soeder said.
Inflamed debate
The CDU/CSU alliance, which polls suggest is on track to emerge as the winner of the election in just over a week, has called for tougher curbs on immigration after recent attacks.
Under pressure on the issue even before the election was called, Scholz's government had moved to make asylum rules stricter and speed up deportations, including to Afghanistan.
Scholz said Thursday the returns were "complicated" to organise but that the government was "in the process of doing so in other cases... not just once, but on an ongoing basis."
This latest incident comes amid an already heated debate on immigration and security after several similar incidents, most recently in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg last month.
Two people were killed in a knife attack on kindergarten toddlers there, including a two-year-old boy.
After that attack police arrested a 28-year-old Afghan man who authorities say had a history of mental illness.
All radicalized Muslims are mentally ill.
In December, six people were killed after a car ploughed into a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg, also wounding hundreds.
A Saudi man was arrested after that attack, with Interior Minister Nancy Faeser saying he also appeared to be mentally disturbed.
Like I said...
The president of the Verdi union behind Thursday's demonstration, Frank Werneke, said in a statement: "We are deeply upset and shocked at the awful incident."
The attack came as US Vice President JD Vance was expected in the city ahead of the annual Munich Security Conference, which starts Friday.
Also arriving in Munich will be Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is set to hold crucial talks with US representatives over a possible end to the war with Russia.
(AFP)
Emergency services respond to a grenade explosion at a bar in Grenoble, France © Maxime Gruss, AFP
French police were on Thursday searching for an unidentified man who hurled a grenade into a bar in the southeastern city of Grenoble, injuring at least 15 people.
The attacker, whose motive was still unclear, entered the Aksehir bar, situated in a rough neighbourhood of the city, shortly after 8pm (1900 GMT) on Wednesday, prosecutors said.
"Someone came in and threw a grenade, apparently without saying a word, and ran away," prosecutor Francois Touret-de-Courcy told reporters.
Two of the wounded were still in critical condition Thursday.
"I heard a loud bang," said Agnes Lefebvre-Paquet, a witness in her 70s. "And I said to myself that it wasn't a firecracker. I assumed it was a neighbourhood problem."
Another neighbour, dressed in a nightgown and who declined to give her name, said: "We're all shocked."
She said she had lived in the area for 30 years and it was "getting worse and worse".
Touret-de-Courcy said the man may have also carried a Kalashnikov assault rifle but if he did, he did not appear to have fired it. "From what we can tell, all the damage was caused by the exploding grenade," he said.
"Many clients" were present when the grenade exploded at the bar in the Olympic Village neighbourhood, built when the Alpine city hosted the 1968 Winter Olympics.
Touret-de-Courcy said investigators had not yet identified a motive but did not believe it was a "terrorist attack".
"There's nothing to make us think it's linked to terrorism," he said, calling it an "act of extreme violence" that "may be linked to a settling of scores".
'Anything is possible'
Investigators are looking at a possible connection to drug trafficking, he said.
Gang-related killings have become increasingly frequent in Grenoble and its suburbs.
"I condemn in the strongest possible terms this criminal act of extraordinary violence," Grenoble Mayor Eric Piolle wrote on X.
Deputy Mayor Chloe Pantel told AFP the bar is "a spot where locals and people from outside the neighbourhood gather, especially to watch football matches".
The community bar, named after a town in Turkey, is run by Algerian managers and frequented mostly by men, according to neighbours.
All of which point to Islam.
Touret de Coucy said it was "not particularly considered to be a problem spot".
Karim, a city employee who gave only his first name, said he was a regular at the bar, which he described as usually calm. "You go there for a coffee and a chat," he said, however adding: "In Grenoble anything is possible."
Some 80 first responders were mobilised after the attack, with police still present in numbers at the cordoned-off scene early Thursday.
France's Health Minister Yannick Neuder is due to visit victims and medical staff at Grenoble University Hospital on Thursday morning.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
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