Armed man shot dead near Israeli Consulate and Nazi-era museum in Munich
5 September 2024, 12:04
Police were alerted to a person carrying a ‘long gun’ in the Karolinenplatz area of the German city on Thursday.
Police in Munich exchanged fire with a man near a museum on the city’s Nazi-era history and the Israeli Consulate, fatally wounding the suspect.
According to a police spokesman, officers were alerted to a person carrying a “long gun” in the Karolinenplatz area, near downtown Munich, at around 9am on Thursday.
There was an exchange of shots in which the suspect sustained fatal injuries, but there no was no indication that anyone else was hurt, spokesman Andreas Franken told reporters.
There was no immediate information on the suspect’s identity or on any motive, Mr Franken said.
The man, who was carrying an old-make of firearm with a repeating mechanism, died at the scene.
Thursday marked the 52nd anniversary 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.
It was unclear whether the incident was in any way related to the anniversary.
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.
Five officers were at the scene at the time and police deployed to the area in force after the shooting.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the consulate in Munich was closed when the shooting occurred and that no consulate 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 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 did not want to speculate on what had happened.
She reiterated that “the protection of Jewish and Israeli facilities has the highest priority”.
