Suicide Bomber At German Festival

Apart from the bomber, no one died, but 15 people were injured, at least three of them severely. According to police, the man tried to enter the festival area, but did not have a ticket. More than 2,000 people visited the festival each day July 22-24. On the last day, three German singer-songwriters were billed: Joris, Phillipp Dittberner and Gregor Meyle. The bomber blew himself up at around 10:15 p.m., during Meyle’s set. The festival was aborted.

The artist thanked the police and security in a statement on Facebook. He especially thanked “the security employee, who refused the assassin entry to the site.”

The perpetrator was an asylum seeker who came to Germany two years ago but his asylum application had been refused by authorities. He wasn’t sent back to Syria though, because the country is in a state of war. Police are investigating whether it was a religiously motivated suicide attack.

As zeit.de reported, police found metal parts strewn across the crime scene, suggesting the charge contained nails. This is the fourth brutal crime that made German news in the past week.

On the same day, July 24, a 21-year-old asylum seeker from Syria killed a woman with a machete and heavily injured two other people. He is currently being interrogated. On July 23, a 18-year-old German-Iranian killed nine people, most of them teenagers, in a shooting rampage in Munich before taking his own life. On July 18, a 17-year-old refugee from Afghanistan in Würzburg attacked people on a train with an axe, injuring several. At press time, four were still being treated in hospital. The perpetrator was shot dead by police in the pursuit.