A gunman opened fire at German police before he was shot dead by officers on Thursday, September 5, near Munich's Nazi-era documentation center and the Israeli consulate, the Bavarian state interior minister said. "Police responded with armed force against the perpetrator, who was carrying a rifle and had fired a number of shots," said the minister, Joachim Herrmann, adding that the gunman had died of his wounds.
Herrmann said it was "obvious that the crime scene" near the documentation center and the Israeli diplomatic mission "could provide further clues" about the gunman's motive. The minister also pointed out that Thursday marks "the 52nd anniversary of the terrible attack on the Israeli team during the Olympic Games" of 1972 at the hands of a Palestinian militant group.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressed "horror" at what he described as a "terror attack." "I spoke now with president of Germany, my dear friend Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Together we expressed our shared condemnation and horror at the terror attack this morning near the Israeli consulate in Munich," Herzog said in a post on X.
Munich police wrote on social media platform X that, after the shooting, there were "no indications of any other suspects" and that no one else was wounded. The Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism is located on the site of the former Nazi party headquarters and close to Israel's consulate in the southern German city.
A police helicopter was in the sky above the area and the sound of police sirens blared through the streets. The Bild daily showed pictures of armed police wearing helmets and body armour in the downtown area.
Police advised the public that a large number of police were "on their way to the site of operations in the area of the NS Documentation Center." "To ensure that they can work without hindrance, we ask that you avoid this area as much as possible."