Munich car-ramming attack: Who is the Afghan suspect who drove car into crowd?

Over 20 people, including children, were injured on Thursday (February 13) after a man rammed a car into a group of people in Munich, Germany. The suspected attack came hours before several global figures, including United States Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, descended on the Bavarian city for the high-profile Munich Security Conference set to start tomorrow.

Bavaria’s prime minister said the crash seems to be a “suspected attack”. The suspect has been arrested by the police.

Here’s all we know about the Munich car-ramming attack.

Car rams to crowd in Munich

A car drove into a labour union demonstration on Seidlstrasse in central Munich, injuring some 28 people earlier in the day.

Participants in the Verdi trade union rally were walking along a street when the car sped up and hit into the back of the group.

As per BBC, Munich police spokesman, Christian Huber, said, “A vehicle approached and came up behind the police vehicle. It then moved to overtake, accelerated and reached the end of the rally…”

Officers shot at the suspect’s vehicle after it ploughed into the crowd. “[Police] colleagues caught the attacker. One shot was fired at the vehicle. The attacker was arrested. We currently estimate that we have at least 28 people injured, some seriously,” Huber added.

The police said the exact number of the injured is yet to be determined. As per the local outlet BR24, injured people have been admitted to several hospitals around Munich, including a children’s hospital and the Munich Red Cross Clinic.

The leader of the Verdi public sector workers’ union, Frank Werneke, expressed shock but did not give any further details, reported Reuters.

A passerby, who claimed to have witnessed the suspected attack from a window of a neighbouring office building, told the news agency the car, a Mini Cooper, weaved through the police vehicles before speeding up.

Eyewitnesses told the German newspaper Bild that two men were inside the vehicle when it rammed into the group, reported BBC. However, Munich police reiterated in an update on X that they have “secured” the driver but are unable to confirm reports of involvement of another person.

Who’s the suspect?

The Munich police have detained a 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, who was identified as the suspect.

According to Bavaria’s interior minister, the man was known to the police for theft and drug offences, reported The Guardian.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz also confirmed the suspect was an Afghan citizen, and “this is not something we can tolerate or accept.” He urged the judiciary to “use everything in their power” to charge him.

“Anyone who commits a crime in Germany will not only be severely punished and go to jail, but they also must understand they may not be able to continue to reside in Germany,” he said.

The German chancellor said for the suspect that “he must be punished and must leave the country.”

As per The Guardian, Bavaria’s interior minister Joachim Hermann told reporters that the suspect’s asylum request was rejected. However, he could not be deported to Afghanistan and was allowed to stay.

Hermann said it is presumed that the trade union protest was randomly targeted, but added that this will be further probed.

The state’s justice minister, Georg Eisenreich, said the prosecutors’ department that probes extremism and terror was looking into the case, as per Associated Press (AP).

A crucial time in Germany

The suspected attack comes a day before Germany hosts the three-day Munich Security Conference. As per Reuters, the Thursday incident took place about 1.5 kilometres from the security conference venue.

The Bavarian capital of Munich will be under heavy security in the coming days due to the top-level security conference.

Police have said they do not believe the incident is linked to the Munich Security Conference. But a motive is yet to be determined.

The incident has put the spotlight on security before a snap general election in Germany on February 23. The European country has witnessed a series of attacks involving immigrants in recent months that have made migration a hot-button topic in the election campaign.

Reacting to the suspected attack, opposition leader Friedrich Merz, who is the frontrunner to be the next German chancellor, repeated Bavarian premier Markus Söder’s words that “something must change in Germany,” adding that the safety of citizens will be his conservative CDU/CSU party’s top priority. “We will consistently enforce law and order,” he said.

Merz, who is likely to win next week’s German federal election, has been calling for a stricter migration and asylum policy.

Bavarian premier Söder, who is also from the CDU/CSU party, told reporters earlier, “The attack shows that something has to change in Germany and quickly. … We cannot go from attack to attack and show concern … but must actually change something.”

German vice-chancellor and economy minister Robert Habeck, of the Alliance 90/The Greens party, said on social media it was “important that the background [to this attack] is now quickly clarified.”

Commenting on the identity of the suspect, co-leader of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, Alice Weidel, tweeted, “My deepest sympathies go out to the victims and their families. Will it go on like this forever?”

She emphasised the need for a “turning point” in migration and asylum policy in Germany.

Recent attacks that stunned Germany

Last month, a two-year-old boy and another person died in a knife attack in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria. An Afghan whose asylum application was rejected was a suspect in the case.

The Aschaffenburg case came in the wake of knife attacks in Mannheim and Solingen last year in which the suspects were immigrants from Afghanistan and Syria, respectively.

In December, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old psychiatrist from Saudi Arabia who had been living in Germany for almost two decades, was arrested for driving a car into a crowded Christmas market in Magdeburg. The attack killed five people, including a nine-year-old boy, and injured over 200 people, sending shockwaves across Germany.

With inputs from agencies