Islamic State claims attack in Germany

BERLIN—German officials disputed one another Monday over the import of a suicide attack near a rock music festival, with the interior minister of Bavaria calling it an “Islamist suicide attack,” while federal officials tried to lessen the public’s fear of refugees.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed only the bomber, and police found a video on his phone in which he pledges himself to the group.

But officials downplayed the likelihood of a plot directed from outside the country, pointing out that the 27-year-old Syrian refugee had tried to kill himself twice before in Germany in the past year, and that he had been placed under psychiatric care. The Interior Ministry said he was under a deportation order that would have gone go into effect Wednesday, after which he would have had four weeks to leave the country.

On Sunday at 10:10 p.m., his third suicide try succeeded when he detonated a backpack bomb as he was trying to get into a music festival at Ansbach, a medieval town in the southern German state of Bavaria. He also wounded 12 people, three of whom were described as having “severe” injuries.

The death toll could have been worse. The refugee had been in line to enter the “Ansbach Open 2016” rock festival but had been denied entry because he didn’t have a ticket. There were an estimated 2,500 people inside the festival.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said he considered the attempt, the third mass attack in Bavaria in a week, an “Islamist suicide attack.”