Two killed as van driven into beer garden
TWO PEOPLE were killed and 20 injured, six of them critically, when a van was deliberately driven into a crowded German beer garden yesterday.
The driver, who was not believed to be a terrorist, shot himself dead at the scene.
The vehicle ploughed through occupied tables and chairs outside a popular bar in the heart of the old quarter of Munster, near the city’s 13th century St-Paulus-Dom cathedral just before 4pm local time.
It came to a stop at the front of the cafe before the driver killed himself, police said.
German chancellor Angela Merkel said: “I am deeply shocked by the terrible events. Everything imaginable is now being done to explain what has happened and support the victims and their relatives.”
The area around the Grosser Kiepenkerl, a restaurant which serves German specialities popular with tourists, was sealed off amid fears the outrage was terror-related.
The van attack happened exactly a year after a rejected Uzbek asylum seeker drove a hijacked truck into crowds of shoppers in central Stockholm, Sweden, killing five people and wounding 15.
A police helicopter hovered overhead as reinforcements arrived in Munster, which is between Dortmund and Osnabruck and has a population of 300,000.
Armed police roadblocks were mounted around Duisberg, south-west of Munster, as police investigated reports of accomplices.
A police spokesman said: “At 3.27pm a vehicle drove into the outside area of the restaurant. Three people were killed, 20 injured, and six of those seriously injured. The perpetrator killed himself in the vehi- cle.” The regional government confirmed the attacker was German with no links to terror groups. He was said locally to have had mental health problems. Interior minister Horst Seehofer said: “It is with dismay that I have learnt of the terrible incident in Munster. My thoughts are with the victims, relatives and their friends. The police in Munster and the whole [state of] North Rhine-Westphalia are now working at top speed on the clarification of the facts.”
Federal president Frank-Walter Steinmeier said: “The reports coming out of Munster are appalling. My deepest thoughts are with all those who have lost loved ones and are in deep sorrow.”
Erich Rettinghaus, chairman of the regional German Police Federation, said: “The threat level has remained high throughout Germany. Now it has happened in North Rhine-Westphalia which until now we have been in a position to prevent any bombings and attacks in the early stages. This time it did not succeed.
“Now, above all, it remains to provide answers and to arrest all other possible accomplices to prevent any further acts,” he added.