Oman condemns Munich killings
NO IS LINK: Lone 18-year-old gunman inspired by other mass shootings around the world
MUSCAT/ BERLIN/ MUNICH: The Sultanate on Saturday has condemned a terror attack on a shopping mall in Munich, Germany which claimed lives of 10 persons and injured several others. In a statement to Oman News Agency (ONA), a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official expressed the Sultanate’s solidarity with Germany and offered condolences to the families of the victims, and wished the injured speedy recovery. The German police said the lone 18-year-old German-Iranian gunman was inspired by other mass shootings around the world and ruled out any link to the IS.
Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae said the gunman, a student named in the German media as Ali David Sonboly, acted alone when he opened fire in a McDonald’s restaurant and a nearby shopping centre on Friday. Prosecutors say he suffered from depression.
Andrae said the assailant had no connection to IS, which has claimed recent attacks in the French city of Nice, in which 84 people died, and a knifeand-axe attack on a train in Germany in which four people and a passer-by were injured.
Instead, investigators found material on mass shootings in the gunman’s room when they raided his family’s Munich apartment early on Saturday after Friday night’s shooting spree in which 27 people were also injured.
Andrae told a press conference that he believed the far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, whose rampage in Norway five years ago left 77 people dead, would have played a role in helping to drive the Munich shooter to launch his attack.
“It is obvious that it did,” Andrae said, noting the material in the gunman’s room, which included a book entitled, Rampage in My Head -Why Students Kill
ecurity officials said the material showed the gunman had also been fascinated with the actions of a 17-yearold German who had shot dead 15 of his classmates seven years ago in the western German town of Winnenden, and that he may had felt bullied.
The Munich attack coincided with events in Norway marking the day five years ago when Breivik began his rampage by detonating a homemade bomb in Oslo following a deadly shooting spree on the nearby island of Utoya. In her first public comments since the shooting, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday that Germans are mourning those who died and “share the pain” of the victims’ families and friends.