A driver plows into a union demonstration in Germany, injuring 30 people

BERLIN — A man drove a car into a union demonstration in central Munich on Thursday, injuring 30 people including children, authorities said. Officials said it was believed to be an attack.

The suspect, an Afghan asylum seeker, was arrested. The incident follows a series of attacks involving immigrants in recent months that have pushed migration to the forefront of the campaign in Germany’s Feb. 23 election.

Participants in a demonstration by the service workers union ver.di were walking along a street about 10:30 a.m. when the car overtook a police vehicle following the gathering, accelerated and plowed into the back of the group, police said.

Officers arrested the suspect after firing a shot at the car, deputy police chief Christian Huber said. He added that some of those hurt were seriously injured. A damaged Mini could be seen at the scene, along with debris including shoes.

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The suspect is a 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, Huber said. Bavaria’s state interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said officials believe the protest was probably targeted at random.

The state’s justice minister, Georg Eisenreich, said a prosecutors department that investigates extremism and terrorism was looking into the case.

Police said the man, who they added lived in Munich and had a valid residence permit, was known to authorities from investigations in which he had been a witness because of a former job as a store detective.

“We feel with the victims, we are praying for the victims — we hope very much that they all make it,” Bavarian governor Markus Soeder told reporters at the scene.

“It is suspected to be an attack — a lot points to that,” Soeder added.

Mayor Dieter Reiter said that children were among those injured.

A string of recent attacks

The Munich incident comes three weeks after a 2-year-old boy and a man were killed in a knife attack in Aschaffenburg, also in Bavaria. An Afghan whose asylum application was rejected was the suspect in that attack, which propelled migration to the center of the German election campaign.

The Aschaffenburg attack followed knife attacks in Mannheim and in Solingen last year in which the suspects were immigrants from Afghanistan and Syria, respectively — in the latter case, the suspect was a rejected asylum seeker who was supposed to have left the country.

In the December Christmas market car-ramming in Magdeburg, a Saudi doctor was detained.

Demands for political consequences

Germany’s main opposition conservative bloc, in which Soeder is a prominent figure, has demanded a tougher approach to irregular migration, calling for many more people to be turned back at the border and for an increase in deportations. Curbing migration is also a core issue for the far-right Alternative for Germany, which polls put in second place behind the conservatives.

“This is more evidence that we can’t go from attack to attack and show dismay. Thank police for their deployment,” Soeder said. “This is not the first such act. ... We are determined that something must change in Germany, and quickly.”

Alternative for Germany’s co-leader Alice Weidel posted on the social media platform X: “Is this supposed to carry on forever? Migration turnaround now!”

Center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government said that it already has done a lot to reduce irregular migration and that the opposition’s plans are incompatible with German and European Union law.

Scholz described the latest incident as “a terrible attack.”

“Anyone who commits crimes in Germany will not just be punished severely and have to go to prison, but must expect that he cannot continue his stay in Germany — and that also goes for countries that it is very difficult to send people back to,” he said.

The chancellor noted that his government deported convicted criminals to Afghanistan on a flight in August and is working to do so again — “and not just once, but continually.”

Herrmann said the Munich suspect’s asylum application apparently had been rejected but it hadn’t been possible to deport him.

The Bavarian capital will see heavy security in the coming days because of the three-day Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of international foreign and security policy officials, which opens Friday.

Herrmann said authorities do not believe the car-ramming was connected to the conference, but they still need to determine the motive.

Moulson writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Stefanie Dazio in Berlin contributed to this report.