German president vows resilience

Country grieves for victims of Munich shooting rampage

BERLIN— Munich on Sunday mourned the victims of the shooting rampage in which nine people were killed, with Germany’s president vowing that the country won’t give in to fear after a string of violence that also included two attacks claimed by Islamic extremists.

On July 22, an18-year-old GermanIranian man killed nine people and wounded over 30 others at a McDonald’s restaurant and shopping mall in the city. He then killed himself. There was no suggestion that Islamic extremism played any part in the slayings.

“We will probably never find out what really moved him and pushed him to his inhuman actions,” President Joachim Gauck said at a memorial event in Bavaria’s state parliament.

The rampage in Munich was the deadliest of a string of attacks over a week that rattled Germany — a sequence that also included an axe attack and a bombing in Bavaria that were both claimed by Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

Gauck acknowledged that “the events outstrip our ability to distinguish one act from another — we find it hard to distinguish between whether an act was committed in the name of a religion or an ideology, out of fanaticism, nationalism or racism.”

“There is one thing we will not give all those who want to make our home a place of fear and horror, the assailants and gunmen and the terrorists: our submission,” he said. “They will not force us to hate like they hate. They will not keep us in the captivity of perpetual fear.”

Earlier Sunday, Gauck joined Chancellor Angela Merkel and regional officials at a non-denominational service in the city’s Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady. That service included an address by a Muslim representative, reflecting the fact that several of the Munich victims were Muslims.

German officials have said the Munich gunman was a withdrawn loner obsessed with playing “killer” video games who had been treated for depression and psychiatric problems.