An Afghan asylum seeker was arrested after a suspected car ramming attack injured at least 28 people in the southern German city of Munich on Thursday, police have said.
The incident comes on the eve of a high-profile international conference in Munich and amid an election campaign in which immigration and security have been key issues after a spate of similar attacks.
A passenger car drove into a street demonstration of striking workers from the Verdi trade union near the city center and was then shot at by officers, said the deputy head of Munich police Christian Huber.
The driver, a 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, was arrested at the scene, Huber said.
Earlier a fire service spokesman told AFP that several of those hurt were “seriously injured, some of them in a life-threatening condition.”
The state premier of Bavaria Markus Soeder told a press conference that the incident was “just terrible” and that “it looks like this was an attack.”
Soeder’s Bavarian CSU party and its national sister party the CDU have demanded tougher curbs on migration after a series of similar attacks which have shocked the country.
“This is not the first incident… we must show determination that something will change in Germany,” Soeder said.
“This is further proof that we can’t keep going from attack to attack.”
The ground at the scene of the incident was littered with items including glasses, shoes, thermal blankets and a pushchair.
