Munich — Police in Munich on Thursday exchanged gunfire with a man near a museum dedicated to the city’s Nazi-era history and the Israeli consulate. The suspect was wounded.
According to police spokesman Andreas Franken, officers spotted a man carrying a “long gun” in the Karolinenplatz area near downtown Munich at about 9 a.m. A gunfight followed, leaving the suspect seriously injured, but there are no indications that anyone else was hurt, Franken said.
It completed 52 years on Thursday. Palestinian militants attack Israeli delegation The 1972 Munich Olympics saw the killing of 11 Israeli team members, a West German police officer and five attackers. It was unclear whether Thursday’s incident was in any way connected to the attack 52 years ago.
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Police said there was no evidence of any other suspects linked to the incident. They have increased their presence in Germany’s third-largest city, but said they had found no indications of any incidents or any other suspects at other locations.
Five officers were on the scene at the time of the shooting, but police reinforcements were deployed to the area after the incident. Franken said he had no further information about the suspect or his gun.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the consulate in Munich was closed when the shooting occurred because a memorial event was being held to commemorate the Olympic attack and that no consulate staff was harmed. The nearby museum also said all its staff were safe.
Speaking at an unrelated news conference in Berlin, German Interior Minister Nancy Fieser described Thursday’s shooting as “a serious incident” but said she did not want to speculate about what had happened. She reiterated that “the protection of Jewish and Israeli facilities is a top priority.”
Other Western European countries, including Germany, Battling a rise in anti-Semitism For many years.
As CBS News correspondent Chris Livesey reported in July, nearly 40% of anti-Semitic incidents reported worldwide during 2023 were in Europe, and the ongoing war with Israel in Gaza escalated after an attack by Hamas on October 7. In Germany, reports of anti-Semitic incidents nearly doubled last year, while in the UK, they more than doubled and in France, they nearly quadrupled.
Livesay said a sharp rise in such incidents in Europe has led some Jews to abandon their lives on the continent and move to Israel, even though that country is in an active war.