Munich Vehicle Collision Injures at Least 28 People One Day Before Security Conference Begins
A driver plowed a vehicle into a labor union demonstration in Munich, Germany, on Thursday morning, injuring at least 28 people, including children, according to authorities.
The service workers’ union Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft (ver.di) organized a demonstration for 13 February. Participants were walking along a street at roughly 10:30 a.m. local time when the driver of a Mini Cooper maneuvered around a police vehicle escort and drove into a group of people.
Law enforcement fired one shot at the vehicle and then arrested the suspected driver. Authorities have not yet released the driver’s name, but said that the suspect is a 24-year-old asylum-seeker from Afghanistan. They also could not confirm eyewitness reports that there was a second person in the car at the time of the collision, according to the BBC.
The demonstration was organized in response to stalled negotiations about federal and local public service wages, according to CNN. Frank Werneke, chairman for ver.di, said in a press release that the union’s thoughts went out to the victims and their families.
“We thank all helpers for their efforts. …We unions stand for solidarity, especially in such a dark hour,” Werneke said. “At this point in time, we do not have any reliable information about the background to the incident.”
Officials reported that some of the injuries from the vehicle ramming were serious, but both the full extent of injuries and whether the crash was intentional or an accident remain unclear, according to Deutsche Welle (DW). Some politicians, however, have indicated that the crash was deliberate.
Joachim Herrmann, minister of the interior of Bavaria, said that the suspect was familiar to authorities in connection with other offenses, including shoplifting and drugs. Hermann “said officials believe the protest was likely targeted at random,” the Associated Press (AP) reported.
Markus Söder, state premier for Bavaria, also said that the circumstances surrounding the crash indicated a deliberate attack, DW reported.
“The incident follows a series of attacks involving immigrants in recent months that have pushed migration to the forefront of the campaign for Germany’s [23 February] election,” the AP reported.
The most recent prior incident was a knife attack in Aschaffenburg in January where a 41-year-old man and a 2-year-old boy were killed. The suspect in that incident was an Afghan who had recently been denied asylum.
Migration has become a more crucial issue in the Germany's latest round of elections after two knife attacks occurred in 2024; both suspects were identified as immigrants from Afghanistan and Syria. Additionally, in December 2024, there was a vehicle attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg. The suspected driver was identified as a physician from Saudi Arabia.
Thursday's incident occurred just one day before the city is set to host the Munich Security Conference, which is expected to feature high-ranking politicians from various nations, including Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. Vice President JD Vance. The crash site is roughly 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) from the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, which is hosting the conference.
“Local security measures have been bolstered due to the conference, authorities said, with at least 5,000 police officers on duty this weekend,” CNN reported.
Hermann added that authorities do not believe that the crash has any connection to the conference, according to the DW. The conference attendees plans to discuss shifts in governments and legislatures in the United States and Europe, as well as security policy, global, and regional challenges.
