Munich police kill ‘terror’ suspect in shootout near Israel consulate

MUNICH, Germany: German police shot dead a man who opened fire on them Thursday (Sep 5) in what they treated as a foiled “terrorist attack” on Munich’s Israeli consulate on the anniversary of the 1972 Olympic Games killings.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Bavarian police “may have prevented something terrible from happening today”, declaring in a post on X that “anti-Semitism and Islamism have no place here”.
Police identified the gunman, who died in a hail of police bullets after firing a vintage carbine rifle fitted with a bayonet at them, as an 18-year-old Austrian.
Austrian police, who later raided his home, said the man, who had Bosnian roots, had been investigated last year for possible “terrorist” links on suspicion he had become “religiously radicalised”.
He had assaulted classmates and shown an online interest in explosives and weapons, they said, but prosecutors dropped the case in April 2023.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said “the quick and decisive reaction of the Munich police stopped an attacker today and possibly prevented a terrorist act of violence”.
“This act took place in the immediate vicinity of the Israeli Consulate General – on the anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Israeli Olympic team in 1972,” she said.
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.”