Germany bomber allegiant to IS

Syrian had attempted suicide after asylum claim rejection

A Syrian asylum seeker who blew himself up outside a music festival in Germany had made a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group ( IS), authorities said Monday, after a week of attacks has shaken the country.

The 27- year- old assailant wounded 15 people, four of them seriously, in the southern city of Ansbach on Sunday night when he set off the bomb in his rucksack, killing himself.

“A video made by the assailant was found on his mobile phone in which he threatened an attack,” Bavarian state interior minister Joachim Herrmann told reporters. “After that, he announced in the name of Allah that he pledged allegiance to [ IS chief] Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi, the well- known Islamist leader, and announced an act of revenge against Germans because they were standing in the way of Islam.”

Europe’s economic powerhouse was already reeling after nine people were killed in a shopping center shooting rampage in Munich on Friday and four people were wounded in an axe attack on a train in Wuerzburg on July 18.

All three assaults were in Bavaria, which has been a gateway for tens of thousands of refugees under Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal asylum policy.

Merkel’s deputy spokesperson Ulrike Demmer expressed the government’s “shock” after the rash of attacks but also warned against branding all refugees a security threat.

“Most of the terrorists who carried out attacks in recent months in Europe were not refugees,” she told reporters.

“The terrorism threat [ among refugees] is not larger or smaller than in the population at large.”

Police said the Ansbach attacker intended to target the open- air festival, but he was turned away because he did not have a ticket and instead detonated the device outside a nearby cafe. “If he had made it inside, there would certainly have been more victims,” a police spokesperson said.

The explosion went off at around 10 pm in the center of the city of Ansbach, not far from where more than 2,500 people had gathered for the concert.

The attacker, who came to Germany two years ago but had his asylum claim rejected after a year, had tried to kill himself twice in the past and had spent time in a psychiatric clinic, authorities said.

He was facing imminent deportation to Bulgaria, where he was first registered within the EU as an asylum seeker, a German interior ministry spokesman said. The assailant was already known to Ansbach police due to his link to a drug- related offense.

Europe has been on edge for months after a string of deadly attacks claimed by IS, including bombings in Brussels and the carnage at Bastille Day celebrations in the southern French city of Nice.