Here is the result in plain text:
A 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker drove a car into a crowd in the German city of Munich on Thursday, injuring at least 30 people, police have said. Officers said they were treating the incident as a suspected attack.
Munich police said the car, a Mini Cooper, accelerated and ploughed into the back of a rally by the Verdi trade union during a strike by public sector workers. It happened in Munich’s city centre at the junction of Karlstrasse and Seidlstrasse at about 10:30 local time (11:30 GMT).
Employees of day-care centres, hospitals, sanitation facilities and public swimming pools had joined the strike, calling for higher pay and longer holidays. At the time of the collision around 1,500 people were on their way to the rally’s final location a short distance away.
One shot was fired at the vehicle by police before the driver was detained at the scene. It is unclear whether the suspect was injured.
Emergency services had been in the area because of the rally allowing the suspect to be quickly arrested and for the injured to be treated, police said. It is unclear whether the suspect was injured. A police spokesman told local broadcaster BR that police are checking whether there was a link between the demonstration and the incident.
The crash happened hours before the US vice president and Ukrainian president were due to arrive in the city for the Munich Security Conference – but police say they don’t believe it’s related.
At least 30 people have been injured, including two seriously, German police said on Thursday. The local fire service said some of those hurt were in a “life-threatening condition”. Munich’s mayor Dieter Reiter said children were among those injured.
According to local outlet BR24, injured people are being treated at multiple hospitals around Munich, including a children’s hospital and the Munich Red Cross Clinic. Some of the injured include employees of the Munich city administration, Munich’s deputy mayor Dominik Krause told the outlet.
The suspect, Farhad N, who we are not fully naming due to German privacy law, is a 24-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan. He resides in Munich, German police said, adding that his motive was unclear. “It was probably an attack,” Bavaria state premier Markus Söder told reporters.
Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann said the suspect had his asylum application rejected, but he had not been forced to leave due to security concerns in Afghanistan. Munich Police said the suspect had a valid residence permit at the time of the collision. According to the German Press Agency, the suspect came to Germany in 2016 as a minor. He is yet to appear in court and the criminal investigation is continuing.
Source link
