Germany is facing growing public uncertainty after Islamic State claimed as one of its "soldiers" the 27-year-old Syrian man who blew himself up with a nail bomb in Bavaria on Sunday evening.
Monday afternoon, investigators found a video on the dead man’s mobile phone, pledging allegiance to the jihadist group. Soon after, the Islamic Sate-linked Amaq news agency said the man had detonated the nail bomb “in response to calls to target nations in the coalition fighting” the jihadists.
Bavarian interior minister Joachim Hermann said that, in the Arabic-language video, the man announced he would carry out a “revenge” attack against Germany.
“I think that after this video there’s no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background,” said Mr Hermann. “He threatens a specific act of revenge against the Germans because they stand in the way of Islam, as revenge for the killing of Muslims.”
Refused entry
Shortly after 10pm on Sunday the man, identified as Mohammad Daleel, detonated explosives in a rucksack, which also containing nails and metal scraps, after he was refused entry for not having a ticket to a music festival in the town of
Ansbach
.
No one other than the bomber was killed in the attack, attended by some 2,000 people. Fifteen were rushed to hospital with serious, though not life-threatening, injuries.
“Had he managed to get into the festival, there would certainly have been more victims,” said Roman Fertinger, deputy head of police in nearby Nuremberg.
Bavarian minister-president Horst Seehofer described the attack as another “day of terror” in the state – the third in a week.
“Our sympathies go out to the injured of this perfidious and brutal bomb attack in Ansbach,” said Mr Seehofer. “But our constitutional order will not yield.”
The perpetrator of the latest attack was known to police because of two previous suicide attempts and some drug convictions. However, police said he had no extremist profile. Daleel sought asylum in Germany two years ago. After refusal last year, a third attempt to deport him was looming.
As a rule, Germany does not deport people to countries in the grip of civil war, such as Syria, but it was preparing to remove Daleel to Bulgaria, his first point of entry in the EU.
Residents in an Ansbach refugee home who knew the bomber said he had, in the past, distanced himself from Islamism.
"He always said, 'Isis is not Islam, they don't represent Islam'," Alireza Khodadadi told Die Welt.
Welfare officials who dealt with Daleel in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 in Bavaria’s northern Franconia region, said he had been “friendly and nice”.
Sunday's attack was Germany's fourth bloody incident in a week. Last Monday a 17-year- old from Afghanistan attacked tourists with an axe on a regional train in Bavaria, and also left behind a video claiming loyalty to Islamic State.
On Friday an 18-year-old shot dead nine people in Munich. On Sunday another Syrian refugee killed a woman with a machete in neighbouring Baden-Württemberg.
In Ansbach, eyewitnesses said the blast was so strong they felt it in their bodies.
“A security man ran to the entrance. Two people lay on the ground with head and neck injuries,” said eyewitness Kevin Krieger to Sat-1 television.
Hold their nerve
As Germany faces up to its fourth bloody attack in a week, senior police officials warned the country’s politicians to “hold their nerve and not stir up rumours”.
“Nothing can be covered up but nothing should be exaggerated. The population must be kept calm,” said Rainer Wendt, head of Germany’s police union.
But the four attacks, three involving refugees or asylum seekers, have stepped up pressure on German chancellor Angela Merkel, a year after enacting an open-door refugee policy that saw over a million people arrive in the country in 2015.
In a television interview, federal interior minister Thomas de Maizière said refugees and asylum seekers were statistically no more dangerous than any other population group.
“I am sure there are concerns and worry,” he said, “but I cannot discern that the German population is filled with angst, something that wouldn’t be good because fear offers poor counsel.”
Meanwhile, Munich police investigating Friday’s fatal shooting are to charge a 16-year-old friend of the gunman. A reconstructed WhatsApp chat protocol allegedly indicates the two met shortly before the attack, and that the 16 year-old was aware that his friend had a gun.
