A man armed with a machete who entered a police station in a small town in western Germany in the early hours of Friday and threatened to kill officers is believed to have had an Islamic extremist motive.
The incident happened just a day after police shot dead a man who fired at the Israeli Consulate in Munich, in an attack that authorities believe was linked to yesterday’s anniversary of the 1972 Munich massacre in which 11 members of Israel’s Olympic team were killed.
In Friday’s attack, a 29-year-old Albanian national was overwhelmed and arrested in Linz am Rhein, a tourist town in the lower Rhine valley.
Prosecutors said the man, who has not been named, repeatedly shouted “Allahu akbar [God is great]” in Arabic, and said he wanted to kill police officers.
The attack occurred about 2:40 a.m. Prosecutors said police officers on guard duty at the police station locked the door and the entrance to its interior courtyard when the man appeared and waved the machete at them.
Prosecutors said the suspect failed to force the door open but that special forces officers had to be called to subdue him with a stun gun.
Munich Anniversary Attack
On Thursday, police in Munich shot and killed an 18-year-old Austrian man after he allegedly shot at the Israeli Consulate and a museum on the city’s Nazi-era history there, according to officials.An Austrian official said the man bought the World War II vintage rifle, with a bayonet attached, from a weapons collector the day before the attack. The assailant paid 400 euros ($444) for the gun and bayonet and also bought about 50 rounds of ammunition.
At around 9 a.m., he fired at the Israeli Consulate, which was closed at the time for a ceremony commemorating the 1972 Olympics massacre. He then brandished the gun at police officers, who shot him dead, according to officials.
The Munich prosecutor, Gabriele Tilmann, said the “working hypothesis” was that the teenager, who has not been officially identified as is common under German law, “acted out of Islamist or anti-semitic motivation.”
She said they had not determined if he had links with any terrorist group.
“We have to assume that an attack on the Israeli Consulate possibly was planned early today,” Bavaria’s top security official, state interior minister Joachim Herrmann, told reporters at the scene. “It’s obvious that, if someone parks here within sight of the Israeli Consulate ... then starts shooting, it most probably isn’t a coincidence.”
The public security director at Austria’s interior ministry, Franz Ruf, said the man’s home was searched on Thursday and investigators seized “data carriers,” but found no immediate evidence of affiliation with the terrorist group ISIS.
It is not clear when the teenager traveled to Munich from his home in Austria. His parents reported him missing at 10 a.m. Thursday, after he failed to show up at his workplace. He had started a new job earlier this week.
The young man was already known to authorities: Austrian police say he first came to their attention in Feb. 2023 after he made a “dangerous threat” against fellow students.
There was a suspicion that he had become religiously radicalized, was active online in that context, and was interested in explosives and weapons, a police statement said, but prosecutors closed an investigation in April 2023.
However, authorities did issue a ban on him owning weapons until at least the beginning of 2028. Police said he had not come to their attention since.
Other Recent Attacks
Germany has seen a spate of terror attacks in recent months.Last month, three Austrian teenagers were arrested over a foiled plot to attack Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna. Authorities say they believe the teens were inspired by Islamic State and al-Qaida. They planned to kill “tens of thousands,” according to CIA Deputy Director David Cohen.
On Aug. 23, a suspected Islamic extremist from Syria stabbed three people to death and injured eight others at a “Festival of Diversity” in the western city of Solingen.
On May 31, an Afghan immigrant knifed a German policeman to death and injured anti-jihadist activist Michael Stürzenberger in Mannheim.
Anniversary of Munich Olympic Attack
Thursday marked the 52nd anniversary of an attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.Early on Sept. 5, 1972, members of the terrorist group Black September—an affiliate of the Palestine Liberation Organization—stormed the athletes’ Olympic Village apartment. Eleven Israeli athletes were ultimately killed.
A police officer and five of the terrorists were also killed during a botched rescue attempt.
