More than two dozen people were injured when a car crashed into a union demonstration in Munich on Thursday, and the driver, a 24-year-old man who was known to the authorities, was taken into custody, the police said.
The authorities believe the crash, which was carried out by an Afghan citizen, was a deliberate attack, said Markus Söder, Bavaria’s governor.
The crash happened at 10:30 Thursday morning, according to the police, when the car passed a police cruiser that was accompanying the demonstration and plowed into the crowd.
Memories are still fresh of a car ramming attack in December, when a man drove into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, in central Germany, injuring as many as 300 people and killing six.
Photographs and videos of the crash site on Thursday showed a severely dented beige Mini Cooper, which witnesses said had been driven into the crowd.
A rescue helicopter and several ambulances were on site to bring victims — at least 28 were injured, two of them severely — to the hospital.
The crash site was less than a mile from the venue of the Munich Security Conference, which opens tomorrow and attracts high-profile participants and journalists from around the world. The police do not think the crash was connected to the conference.
Sandra Demmelhuber, a journalist for Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Bavarian public broadcaster, was at the crash site and described a chaotic scene.
“There is a person lying on the street and a young man was led away by the police. People sitting, crying and shaking on the ground,” she wrote on X.
The demonstration had been organized by Verdi, one of Germany’s largest unions, which had called a one-day strike for city workers.
The police have set up a command center in a nearby restaurant and have asked witnesses to come forward.
