Failed Asylum Seekers in Germany

"We feel with the victims, we are praying for the victims -- we hope very much that they all make it [recover from their injuries]."

"It is suspected to be an attack - a lot points to that." 

Bavarian Governor Markus Soder

 

"There is currently a major police operation in the area of Dachauer Strasse / Seidlstrasse. We are on site."

Munich Police Service  

"There was an incident in Munich at the Verdi rally. A car drove into the demonstration. "

"A person was lying on the street and a young man was taken away by the police. "

"People were sitting on the ground, crying and shaking. Details still unclear."

Sandra Demmelhuber, local journalist  

"It's all so unbelievable. We are totally shocked and are incredibly afraid for our colleagues who were part of the demonstration."

"We heard that the car drove straight into the demonstration on purpose. Hopefully there will be no fatalities."

Verdi managing director Claudia Weber

A badly damaged car at the centre of the scene   AFP via Getty Images

Central Munich suffered a catastrophic incident yesterday when children, among 28 people injured were the victims of a deliberate attempt to kill those gathered as participants in a service workers' union  demonstration while walking on a street.  A Mini Cooper driven by an Afghan asylum seeker overtook a police vehicle that had been following the gathering. The car driver accelerated, then drove directly toward the back of the marching group striking many in the entourage.

 

Some of the victims are believed to have been seriously injured. The scene was one of understandable chaos, people lying on the street, others sitting on the ground "crying and shaking". According to witnesses at the scene, a woman and child were pinned under the vehicle. Police shot at the vehicle before one of two men in the car was taken away. 

"I was in the demonstration and saw that a man was lying under the car. Then I tried to open the door, but it was locked."

Demonstrator at union gathering

Emergency services attend the scene   AP

A series of attacks involving immigrants have highlighted migration during the campaign for Germany's February 23 election. The car driver was arrested by officers who initially fired a shot at the car. The Mini Cooper was centre of the scene, debris from the scattered crowd surrounding it. Bavaria's state interior minister Joachim Herrman stated that the 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker was previously known to authorities in relation to theft and drug offences. 

According to State Justice Minister Georg Eisenreich, a prosecutors' department which undertakes extremism investigations, was examining the case. The country's main opposition conservative bloc has demanded that a stricter approach to irregular migration be implemented; that many more people must be turned back at the border and deportations increased.

• A 2-year-old boy and an adult were killed in a knife attack in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria -- an Afghan with a rejected asylum application became the suspect;
• There were knife attacks in Mannheim and Solingen last year by suspects who were immigrants from Afghanistan and Syria; the attacker in Solingen was supposed to have left the country as a rejected asylum seeker;
• The December Christmas market car-ramming in Magdeburg where the suspect was a Saudi doctor who had attracted various regional authorities' attention.

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  An injured person is taken away by emergency services   AP