Munich police kill armed man in shootout near Israeli consulate

On Thursday, a shootout with a man took place in Munich, in which the suspect was fatally wounded near a museum on the city’s Nazi history and the Israeli consulate.

According to a police spokesman, officers noticed a person carrying a “long gun” around 9 a.m. in the area of ​​Karolinenplatz near Munich city center. A shootout then ensued, in which the suspect suffered fatal injuries. However, there is no indication that anyone else was injured, spokesman Andreas Franken told reporters.

There is no immediate information on the suspect’s identity or a motive, Franken said. The man, who was carrying an old repeating firearm, died at the scene. Bavaria’s top security official, Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, said the suspect opened fire on police and they returned fire.

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It was unclear whether the incident was in any way linked to the 52nd anniversary of the attack by Palestinian militants on the Israeli delegation at the 1972 Munich Olympics, which took place on Thursday and resulted in the deaths of 11 members of the Israeli team, a West German policeman and five of the attackers.

Police said there was no evidence of any other suspects in connection with the incident. They had increased their presence in Germany’s third-largest city but said they had no evidence of incidents elsewhere or of any other suspects.

When the shots were fired, five officers were on site. The police later deployed several officers to the area.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the consulate in Munich was closed at the time of the shooting and none of its employees were injured.

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The nearby Munich Documentation Center on the History of National Socialism, which opened in 2015 and researches the city’s past as the birthplace of the Nazi movement, also said all its staff were unharmed.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he had spoken with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier. He wrote on the social media platform X that “we expressed our joint condemnation and horror” at the shooting.

At an independent press conference in Berlin, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser described Thursday’s shooting as “a serious incident” but said she did not want to speculate about what happened.

She reiterated that “protecting Jewish and Israeli institutions is a top priority.”