Bavaria’s top security official says a man who blew himself up after being turned away from an open-air music festival in the southern German city of Ansbach was a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum.
One person, believed to be the attacker himself, has been killed and around 12 are believed injured after an explosion at a wine bar late on Sunday in Ansbach, near the southern German city of Nuremberg, a police spokesman has confirmed.
Earlier this year German authorities had to admit they have lost track of around 130,000 migrants, stating: “about 13 per cent [of the over one million migrant total] did not turn up at the reception centres to which they had been directed”.
Initially, police spokesmen had no information on the cause of the blast, but local sources have now dispelled the rumours of a “gas leak” and have attributed the blast to an intentionally detonated device.
The explosion took place at around 10pm CET (4pm EST) next to a music festival attended by around 2,500 people.
Police helicopters circled while the area was evacuated and residents were not allowed back into their nearby homes for hours.
The news came just after the killing of nine people by an 18-year-old gunman in Munich on Friday, and the machete attack by a Syrian refugee in another German town this morning.
A spokesman for the Bavarian Interior Ministry initially said it was unclear if the blast was accidental or intentional, but sources including the local mayor have now suggested an explosive device was detonated.
The German Interior Ministry later confirmed the explosion is likely to have been “intentional”.
A nearby music festival with around 2,500 attendees was shut down, and speculation is emerging on social media platforms that a man was seen to have been turned away from the festival just moments before the blast. The details have not yet been confirmed.
Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann was being briefed about the incident, the spokesman said.
The Nuernberger Nachrichten newspaper reported that the blast occurred at a restaurant in Ansbach.
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Germany’s NTV television reported that officials suspected the explosion was caused by a gas leak.
Questions will now be raised as to how the man remained in Germany, and what German authorities are doing to
Reuters and AP contributed to this report
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