A shooting that led to the death of the gunman saw the perpetrator roam and fire a rifle for ten minutes, with police initially unsure whether the rifle was a prop or the real thing.
Bullets struck the Israeli consulate general in Munich, Germany this week in a shooting which ended, as reported at the time, with the gunman being shot dead by responding police officers. The consulate was closed on Thursday morning during the shooting because its staff were attending a memorial for the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre terror attack, where Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israelis, the timing leading police to suspect the Islamist-sympathising perpetrator may have struck because of that anniversary.
The suspect, 18-year-old Emrah I., is said to have arrived with a Swiss military surplus “repeating rifle” with bayonet — possibly the K31 carbine of 1933 — on Thursday morning and was quickly spotted by police officers. Yet, reports Die Welt, those police were initially unsure whether the out-of-time rifle was real or a prop and lost sight of the Austrian citizen, Bosnian-heritage migrant.
06 September 2024, Bavaria, Munich: Guido Limmer, Vice President of the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office, and Gabriele Tilmann, Senior Public Prosecutor, sit on the podium during a press conference at Munich Police Headquarters on the current state of affairs following the suspected terrorist attack in Munich yesterday. Following the foiled suspected terrorist attack on the Israeli Consulate General in Munich on Thursday (05.09.24), the authorities are continuing to investigate the background. Photo: Lennart Preiss/dpa (Photo by Lennart Preiss/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Emrah I. fired first at the National Socialism Documentation Centre (‘NS-Dokumentationszentrum München’), a new museum and educational centre built on the site of the former ‘Brown House’ national headquarters of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party, which itself was destroyed in Second World War bombing. According to German media, he shot at the building twice. Footage allegedly of the incident shared on German social media shows a gunman being visibly thrown back by the recoil from his rifle.
The migrant gunman then attempted to climb the outer wall of the Israeli consulate general and found he was unable to, and so he opened fire on the building itself. This was also two shots, one of which struck a window. Five other rounds were let off by the teen, including when he ran into a pair of police officers who ordered him to surrender the rifle, when he fired on the lawmen.
Even after now-deceased suspect Emrah I. was gunned down by officers, he still attempted to attack the police from a prone position. In all, he was on the move and firing for around ten minutes, it is stated.
The attack on the Israeli consulate, not just at a time of heightened tensions, but also on the anniversary of a major anti-Israel Palestinian terror attack, has led to discussion of rising antisemitism in Germany, as well as a growing acknowledgement that after a few quieter years, the country could be returning to an era of terror attacks.
That the perpetrator is reported to have been born to an otherwise well-integrated, stable, middle-class family of migrants in neighbouring Austria also underlines the continued risk European nations face from managing diverse populations, where some second and third generation migrants can become vulnerable to online radicalisation.
Emrah I. was known to Austrian police for potential radicalisation, but this information was not passed onto the German authorities. Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung reports he was investigated in Spring 2023 for membership of a terrorist organisation after Islamic State propaganda was found on his cell phone. This investigation was not ultimately followed up on, and this has sparked a minor scandal in Austria, where whether the government should have more power to snoop on private conversations to catch more future terrorists is being discussed.
The shooting was followed the next day, Friday, by another apparently Islamist-inspired attack, with a migrant male carrying a machete raiding a police station. This too was ineffectual, as the would-be assailant was locked in the building by officers and then tasered. He is being held prior to trial.
