GERMAN police shot and killed a man who opened fire on them with a vintage rifle near the Israeli consulate in Munich on Thursday in what they treated as a foiled attack on the diplomatic mission.Authorities identified the gunman, who was killed in a hail of police bullets, as an 18-year-old Austrian man but did not immediately comment on media reports that he was a known extremist.
German news site Spiegel Online and Austrian media said that he had been investigated last year for allegedly spreading Islamic State group propaganda, but that the case had been dropped.
While the motive was not yet known, Bavarian state premier Markus Soeder said “there is a terrible suspicion” the case was linked to Thursday’s anniversary of the deadly 1972 attack on Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich by Palestinian militants.
The shootout around 9:00 am (0700 GMT) sparked a mass mobilisation of about 500 police in downtown Munich, where residents and office workers huddled indoors as sirens wailed and a helicopter flew above.
Video footage published by German media showed dramatic scenes in which police commandos in body armour and helmets took cover from gunshots, then unleashed a barrage of bullets.
Police said five police officers fired at the man, who died on the spot with his weapon beside him — a rifle that pictures showed was fitted with a bayonet.
German authorities were treating the incident as a “possible attack on an Israeli institution”, said Bavarian state interior minister Joachim Herrmann.
Herrmann also noted that Thursday marked “the 52nd anniversary of the terrible attack on the Israeli team during the Olympic Games” of 1972.
Eleven Israeli athletes and a German police officer were killed at the Games after gunmen from the Palestinian Black September group broke into the Olympic village and took them hostage.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog wrote on X that he had spoken with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
“Together we expressed our shared condemnation and horror at the terror attack this morning near the Israeli consulate in Munich,” he said.
“On the day our brothers and sisters in Munich were set to stand in remembrance of our brave athletes murdered by terrorists 52 years ago, a hate-fuelled terrorist came and once again sought to murder innocent people.”
Herzog thanked the German security services for their “swift action” and said that “together we stand strong in the face of terror”.