The explosion occured in Bavaria, outside an open-air with the audience of 2,500 people
July 25, 2016
This past Sunday, July 24, a man detonated a bomb outside a music festival in Bavaria, in the town of Ansbach. The bomber was killed by the explosion and 15 other people were injured, including four who are in a serious condition. The open-air was attended by around 2,500 people. The festival site was evacuated after the explosion.
Bavaria’s Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann, has told reporters this morning that the attacker was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum in Germany. He arrived in the country two years ago and got into trouble with police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences. He was refused refugee status because he had previously been granted asylum in Bulgaria. An attempt to deport him to Bulgaria was suspended due to his mental problems.
Herrmann told during the conference that the man detonated the bomb after he was refused entry to the venue. The man’s backpack was filled with screws and nails, which could have resulted in more victims.
Reuters reports that the bomber had pledged allegiance to Islamic State on a video found on his mobile phone. In the bomber’s room, police found diesel, hydrochloric acid, alcohol, batteries, paint thinner and pebbles – the materials he used to make the bomb.
The Interior Minister also revealed that in the video found on searching the Syrian man “expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to (Islamic State leader) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi … an act of revenge against the Germans because they’re getting in the way of Islam.” Herrmann added, “I think that after this video there’s no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background.”
Nuremberg police chief Roman Fertinger told a news conference, “There was also a laptop that showed pictures and film sequences that glorify violence and are unequivocally linked to Islamic State,”
Germany has suffered four various attacks by migrants in less than a week. On Friday night, July 22, nine people were killed by an 18-year-old Iranian-German outside the shopping mall in Munich in the same region of Bavaria.
“It’s terrible … that someone who came into our country to seek shelter has now committed such a heinous act and injured a large number of people who are at home here,” Herrmann commented at the conference.
