German police shot dead an Austrian suspected Islamist gunman in Munich on Thursday in an exchange of fire close to the Israeli consulate, prompting politicians to stress the importance of protecting Israeli sites in the country. Police said the 18-year-old man fired shots from an old carbine rifle with a bayonet in Munich's Maxvorstadt district, near both the consulate and a Nazi history museum, before being killed in a shootout with five officers.
The incident occurred on the anniversary of the 1972 attack at the Munich Olympics in which Palestinian militants killed 11 Israeli athletes. "There may be a connection between the two," Bavarian state Premier Markus Soeder told reporters, adding that this was being investigated. The gunman was already known to Austrian authorities as a suspected Islamist and had been reported to police last year for alleged membership in an extremist group, a spokesperson for Austria's Interior Ministry in Vienna said.
"We assume that he is a lone perpetrator who is radicalised," said Franz Ruf, Austria's general director for public security.
In a statement Munich police described the incident as a terrorist attack with reference to the Israeli consulate, adding that the suspect's motivation was one focus of the ongoing investigation. A Munich police spokesperson said the teenager was an Austrian citizen thought to be resident in Austria. He had recently travelled to Germany and lived in Austria's Salzburg area, Austria's Standard newspaper and Germany's Spiegel news outlet reported.
The Israeli foreign ministry said its Munich consulate was closed on Thursday for a commemoration of the 1972 Olympics massacre and no one from the consulate staff was injured in Thursday's incident. The museum and research institute focuses on the history of Germany's 1933-45 Nazi regime.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was grateful for the quick reaction of the emergency services in Munich, which may have prevented something terrible from happening. "I will say it very clearly: anti-Semitism and Islamism have no place here," he wrote in a post on X. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser described the exchange of fire as a serious incident. "The protection of Israeli facilities has top priority," she said.
"We don't know all the background yet. What we do know leaves us in shock," said Josef Schuster, head of Germany's Central Council for Jews.
The shooting came at a time of heightened polarisation in Germany's political climate. On Sunday, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) became the first far-right party to win a regional election since World War Two. Politicians are also debating how to prevent violent crime following a spate of attacks, most recently in the northwestern city of Solingen where three people were fatally stabbed by a Syrian asylum seeker at a festival last month.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he had spoken to his German counterpart about the incident in Munich. "We expressed our shared condemnation and horror at the terror attack this morning," Herzog posted on X, adding that on the day of remembrance for the Olympics massacre, "a hate-fueled terrorist came and once again sought to murder innocent people".
In October 2019, a gunman who had denounced Jews opened fire outside a German synagogue in the eastern city of Halle on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, killing two people.
(With inputs from agency)
