Gunman at Israeli consulate shot dead by German police on anniversary of massacre

MUNICH, Germany — German police shot and killed a man in a shootout near the Israeli consulate and a Nazi history museum in Munich on Thursday, state Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said.

“Thanks to the intervention of the police, the attacker was arrested,” Herrmann told reporters. A police spokesman in the Bavarian capital said the man was in possession of a “long-barreled weapon” that turned out to be an old rifle.

The incident occurred on the anniversary of the 1972 bombing of the Munich Olympics, in which Palestinian militants murdered 11 Israeli athletes. The motive of Thursday's shooter was not immediately known, but Herrmann said police would try to clarify whether the incident was connected to the anniversary.

The suspect was an Austrian teenager who had recently visited Germany and was living in the Austrian region of Salzburg, near the border with Bavaria, the Standard newspaper and the Spiegel news agency reported.

He is known to security authorities as an Islamist, media reported.

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Munich police declined to comment on the report and said they were not currently sharing any information about the suspect.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the consulate was closed Thursday to commemorate the massacre and that no consulate staff were injured in the incident.

The museum and research institute, which focuses on the history of the German Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945, is located near the Israeli consulate in Munich's Maxvorstadt district.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called the exchange of fire a serious incident. “The protection of Israeli installations is a top priority,” she said.

The shooting comes amid growing polarization in Germany's political climate. On Sunday, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party became the first far-right party to win a regional election since World War II.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he had spoken to his German counterpart.

“We expressed our common condemnation and horror at this morning's terrorist attack,” Herzog wrote on X, adding that on the day of remembrance of the Olympic massacre, “a terrorist driven by hatred came and once again sought to murder innocent people.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Gunman at Israeli consulate in Munich shot dead by German police