Police say suspect killed in police shootout in Munich was Austrian teenager
A man killed in a shootout with police in Munich was an 18-year-old citizen of neighbouring Austria, police have said.
Authorities believed the teenager may have planned an attack on the Israeli Consulate in the German city.
The suspect was fatally wounded near the consulate and a museum on the city’s Nazi-era history after officers were alerted to a man carrying a gun in the Karolinenplatz area at around 9am on Thursday.
The suspect, who was carrying an old long gun with a bayonet attached to it, died at the scene.
There was no indication that anyone else was hurt, spokesman Andreas Franken told reporters.
Five officers were at the scene at the time the gunfire erupted. Police quickly deployed around 500 officers to the area.
There was no indication that anyone else was hurt, spokesman Andreas Franken told reporters.
The suspect, who was carrying an old-make of firearm with a repeating mechanism, died at the scene.
Bavaria’s top security official, state Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, said the suspect had opened fire at police and that they returned fire.
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.
Police said there was no evidence of any more suspects connected to the incident.
They increased their presence in the city, Germany’s third-biggest, but said they had no indication of incidents at any other locations or of any other suspects.
Police said they had no indication of incidents at any other locations or of any other suspects.
The Austria Press Agency reported that the man, an Austrian citizen with Bosnian roots, had come to the attention of authorities there last year but was not considered high-risk.
Without naming sources, it said that data and a game had been found on his mobile phone that suggested closeness to Islamic extremist ideology, but an investigation of him for possible membership of the so-called Islamic State group was dropped.
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.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he spoke with German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
He wrote on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that “together we expressed our shared condemnation and horror” at the shooting.
Speaking at an unrelated news conference in Berlin, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser described Thursday’s shooting as “a serious incident” but said she didn’t want to speculate on what had happened.
She reiterated that “the protection of Jewish and Israeli facilities has the highest priority”.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
