On 22 July 2016, there was a
mass shooting
There is a lack of consensus on how to define a mass shooting. Most terms define a minimum of three or four victims of gun violence (not including the shooter or in an inner city) in a short period of time, although an Australian study from 200 ...
in the vicinity of the
Olympia shopping mall in the
Moosach district of
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
, Germany. An 18-year-old
Iranian-German, David Sonboly, opened fire on fellow teenagers at a
McDonald's restaurant
McDonald's Corporation is an American multinational fast food chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechristened their business as a hamburger st ...
before shooting at bystanders in the street outside and then in the mall itself. Nine people were killed and 16 others were injured,
four of them by gunfire. Sonboly then hid nearby for more than two hours, and killed himself by a self-inflicted gunshot wound when confronted by police.
Two reports by Bavaria's
State Office of Criminal Investigation and another by the
public prosecutor's office
Public prosecutor's offices are criminal justice bodies attached to the judiciary.
They are separate from the courts in Germany, Austria and the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, and are called the Staatsanwaltschaft.
This kind of office als ...
concluded the shooting was not political, saying Sonboly's main motive was "revenge" for
bullying
Bullying is the use of force, coercion, hurtful teasing or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception (by the bully or by others) of an imba ...
by other immigrants, and that mental illness, romantic rejection and obsession with other shooting rampages were also a factor.
Germany's security agency described him as a "psychologically ill avenger". An independent report by three political scientists said Sonboly may also have been driven by
xenophobia
Xenophobia () is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an in-group and out-group and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a ...
or
far-right
Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...
ideology, and in 2019 Bavarian police declared that the shooting was partly motivated by far-right extremism.
["Germany: 2016 Munich attack had 'radical right-wing' motives, say police"](_blank)
Deutsche Welle
Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave" in English), abbreviated to DW, is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite television service con ...
, 25 October 2019.
Shooting
On the evening of 22 July 2016, David Sonboly opened fire at a McDonald's restaurant near the Olympia shopping mall in the Moosach district of Munich, Germany.
Despite initial reports of multiple attack sites, police could not confirm attacks in any locations other than the shopping area.
Sonboly had made a fake
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
account with a girl's name and posted four invitations to come to the restaurant, but "none of the addressees apparently complied".
[Investigations to the Munich killing spree completed](_blank)
Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigation. 17 March 2017. He stayed in the restaurant from about 5pm. At about 5:50pm, he went into the toilets on the first floor and took a handgun from his backpack. He then left the toilets and opened fire on a group of six teenagers sitting at a table, killing five and wounding another. Eighteen bullets were fired.
He immediately left the restaurant, turned to the right and began shooting at people fleeing towards an electronics shop and at two vehicles parked there. He fired sixteen bullets in this area, killing three people and wounding three others.
Sonboly then crossed Hanauer Strasse and slowly walked into the shopping mall, where he fatally shot another teenager near the lifts.
At about 6pm, Sonboly walked from the shopping mall, over a covered footbridge to the adjoining multistorey car park. While on this bridge, he fired shots towards the parking deck and a passer-by, but hurt no one. He fired thirteen rounds at two unoccupied parked vehicles and walked onto the top parking deck.
There, Sonboly had an argument with a man who shouted at him from the balcony of his flat. During this argument, Sonboly fired two shots at the man. Another man, who was also on his balcony, was wounded by a rebounding bullet.
Sonboly fired three more times towards the mall and towards an employee, without hurting anyone.
Police officers spotted the gunman from an outdoor balcony of the mall, and one officer fired a shot from a submachine gun at him, but missed.
Sonboly ran across Riesstraße and hid in a residential area. He tried to get into a house, and lingered in a stairwell, where he had contact with residents. He then hid in a bicycle storage room. At 8:26pm he went outside and was confronted by police officers, whereupon he shot himself in the head.
Early reports and videos
![July2016-munich-shootings-map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/July2016-munich-shootings-map.png)
An early witness, identified only by her first name Lauretta, in talking to
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
correspondent
Doug McConnell on the phone claimed that the gunman had shouted "''
Allahu Akbar
Allah (; ar, الله, translit=Allāh, ) is the common Arabic word for God. In the English language, the word generally refers to God in Islam. The word is thought to be derived by contraction from '' al- ilāh'', which means "the god", an ...
''!"
The woman's account has not been verified by other witnesses or the police, though it was widely disseminated in the media.
A video distributed online showed a gunman firing at pedestrians outside McDonald's. He then moved on to the shopping mall itself.
Another video showed the gunman walking alone on the roof of a nearby car park before opening fire again.
He was heard shouting "I am German" (') and "I was born here" (') after an onlooker shouted
anti-Turkish
Anti-Turkish sentiment, also known as Anti-Turkism ( tr, Türk karşıtlığı), or Turkophobia () is hostility, intolerance, or xenophobia against Turkish people, Turkish culture and the Turkish language.
The term refers to intolerance, not onl ...
statements and other abuse at him.
According to ''
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' (; ''FAZ''; "''Frankfurt General Newspaper''") is a centre-right conservative-liberal and liberal-conservativeHans Magnus Enzensberger: Alter Wein in neuen Schläuchen' (in German). ''Deutschland Radio'', ...
'', the gunman also shouted back "Fucking Turks". However, it is still not clear who started the anti-Turkish insults.
Authorities' response
An urgent warning was issued to avoid the
Karlsplatz
Karlsplatz () is a town square on the border of the first and fourth districts of Vienna. It is one of the most frequented and best connected transportation hubs in Vienna. The Karlskirche is located here.
The first district can be reached e ...
("Stachus"), due to reports of multiple shootings occurring there. Munich police had received information about an attack at Karlsplatz, but after arriving there, announced that the information was false.
Drivers were advised not to pick up any passengers. People in Munich were warned by the police to stay at home and avoid crowds and public squares.
Following initial reports of shots being fired, some 2,300 officers were deployed throughout Munich from the greater area and surrounding states. A manhunt was soon initiated. Munich police urged residents not to leave their homes until further notice.
The
special operations
Special operations (S.O.) are military activities conducted, according to NATO, by "specially designated, organized, selected, trained, and equipped forces using unconventional techniques and modes of employment". Special operations may include ...
police unit
GSG 9
, formerly (), is the police tactical unit of the German Federal Police ''(Bundespolizei (Germany), Bundespolizei)''. The state police (''Landespolizei'') maintain their own tactical units known as the ''Special Deployment Commando, Spezialein ...
was deployed. Other regions of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland were asked to assist in the investigation.
A backpack was found apparently matching the one carried by the gunman at McDonald's. Police reportedly used a robot to examine it,
and a total of 300 rounds of ammunition were found inside. Police officials warned of "an acute terror situation" and initially thought that there were up to three attackers, but later confirmed that there was only one gunman.
The
Munich U-Bahn
The Munich U-Bahn (german: U-Bahn München) is an electric rail rapid transit network in Munich, Germany. The system began operation in 1971, and is operated by the municipally owned Münchner Verkehrsgesellschaft (MVG; Munich Transport Company) ...
, tram service, bus service, and services on the central portion of the
S-Bahn
The S-Bahn is the name of hybrid urban- suburban rail systems serving a metropolitan region in German-speaking countries. Some of the larger S-Bahn systems provide service similar to rapid transit systems, while smaller ones often resemble co ...
in Munich were stopped.
Munich main station was evacuated and all trains were cancelled in and out of Munich. Regional and inter-city trains ceased their service to and from the region of the shooting.
Deutsche Bahn
The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). The Federal Republic of Germany is its single shareholder.
describes itself as the se ...
provided accommodation trains for stranded commuters and tourists where they could seek refuge. These were located at
Mammendorf
Mammendorf is a municipality in Bavaria, Germany. It is located halfway between Munich and Augsburg.
Location
Mammendorf is part of the district of Fürstenfeldbruck, Upper Bavaria and lies about 6 kilometres northwest of the city of Fürstenfeld ...
,
Starnberg
Starnberg is a German town in Bavaria, Germany, some southwest of Munich. It is at the north end of Lake Starnberg, in the heart of the " Five Lakes Country", and serves as capital of the district of Starnberg. Recording a disposable per-capi ...
,
Geltendorf
Geltendorf is a municipality in the district of Landsberg in Bavaria, Germany.
World heritage site
It is home to one or more prehistoric pile-dwelling (or stilt house) settlements that are part of the Prehistoric Pile dwellings around the Alps ...
,
Dachau, and
Freising
Freising () is a university town in Bavaria, Germany, and the capital of the Freising ''Landkreis'' (district), with a population of about 50,000.
Location
Freising is the oldest town between Regensburg and Bolzano, and is located on the Is ...
.
Casualties
Nine victims and the perpetrator died in the incident; 16 others were injured,
[ four by gunshot.] Three of the dead were female, and six were male. Seven of the dead were Muslims. Two of the victims were of Turkish origin, one was Greek, two victims were from German Sinti
The Sinti (also ''Sinta'' or ''Sinte''; masc. sing. ''Sinto''; fem. sing. ''Sintesa'') are a subgroup of Romani people mostly found in Germany and Central Europe that number around 200,000 people. They were traditionally itinerant, but today o ...
families and one was from a Kosovan Roma
Roma or ROMA may refer to:
Places Australia
* Roma, Queensland, a town
** Roma Airport
** Roma Courthouse
** Electoral district of Roma, defunct
** Town of Roma, defunct town, now part of the Maranoa Regional Council
*Roma Street, Brisbane, a ...
family.
* Sevda Dağ, 45, Turkish
* Hüseyin Dayıcık, 19, Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
[
* Selçuk Kiliç, 15, Turkish
* Giuliano Kollmann, 18, German of Romanian origin
* Can Leyla, 14, Turkish
* Roberto Rafael, 15, Hungarian
* Armela Segashi, 14, Kosovan
* Sabina Sulaj, 14, Kosovan
* Dijamant Zabergja, 20 or 21, German of Kosovan heritage]
There have been claims that Sonboly deliberately targeted people of Turkish or Arab origin, groups he apparently felt had picked on him at school. The state government initially said the victims were not chosen in any particular way and that Sonboly did not know any of them.[ Police initially considered it a coincidence that all of the fatalities were of immigrant backgrounds; they suggested this may be because the McDonald's was frequented by the children of immigrants.
In preparation for admitting the injured, multiple hospitals called their medical staff in to work outside normal working hours. A state of emergency was declared at the ]Rechts der Isar Hospital
The Rechts der Isar Hospital (''Hospital to the right of the Isar'') is a hospital in the Haidhausen district of Munich, Germany. It is the teaching hospital and biomedical research facility of the TUM School of Medicine.
Overview
In Britain, ...
, where one of the injured victims died.
Investigation
Munich police chief Hubertus Andrä said that the shooting appeared to be a "classic shooting rampage" and not terrorism. Police said that the gunman was obsessed with mass shootings and that written material on such attacks was found in his room. Prosecutor Steinkraus Koch said that the gunman had a book about school shooting
A school shooting is an attack at an educational institution, such as a primary school, secondary school, high school or university, involving the use of firearms. Many school shootings are also categorized as mass shootings due to multiple c ...
s called ''Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters'' by Peter Langman. No references to religion were found in documents in his home. Andrä said that there was an "obvious" link between the shooting and the fifth anniversary of the 2011 Norway attacks
The 2011 Norway attacks, referred to in Norway as 22 July ( no, 22. juli) or as 22/7, were two domestic terrorist attacks by neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik against the government, the civilian population, and a Workers' Youth League (AUF) ...
committed by Anders Behring Breivik
Fjotolf Hansen (born 13 February 1979), better known by his birth name Anders Behring Breivik () and by his pseudonym Andrew Berwick, is a Norwegian far-right domestic terrorist, known for committing the 2011 Norway attacks on 22 July 2011. On ...
. However, a police search of the shooter's residence did not find the manifesto written and distributed by Breivik. According to ''Abendzeitung
The Abendzeitung (''"Evening Paper"''), sometimes abbreviated to AZ, is a liberal morning tabloid newspaper from Munich, Germany. A localized edition is published in Nuremberg. The paper is published six days a week; the masthead of the Saturday ...
'', the shooter's own manifesto was found on his computer's hard disk.
Police investigator Robert Heimberger said that the shooter appeared to have hacked a girl's Facebook account in an attempt to lure people to McDonald's with an offer of free food, but it was later suspected that he had in fact simply created a fake Facebook account, not hacked an existing one.
Authorities said that the gunman had been planning the shooting for a year and probably purchased his gun illegally on the darknet
A dark net or darknet is an overlay network within the Internet that can only be accessed with specific software, configurations, or authorization, and often uses a unique customized communication protocol. Two typical darknet types are social ne ...
. It was said to be a "reactivated" Glock 17
Glock is a brand of polymer-Receiver (firearms), framed, Recoil operation#Short recoil operation, short recoil-operated, locked-breech semi-automatic pistols designed and produced by Austrian manufacturer Glock Ges.m.b.H., Glock Ges.m.b.H. The ...
9mm semi-automatic pistol
A semi-automatic pistol is a type of repeating single-chamber handgun ( pistol) that automatically cycles its action to insert the subsequent cartridge into the chamber (self-loading), but requires manual actuation of the trigger to actuall ...
that previously had been used as a theatre prop. German police believe that the gun may have originated in Slovakia, and said that its serial number had been removed.
On 25 July 2016, Munich police announced the arrest of a 16-year-old Afghan friend of the perpetrator who was being investigated on suspicion of failing to report the gunman's plans.
Nearly two years after the shooting, police opened an investigation into Sonboly's contact with William Atchison, perpetrator of the 2017 Aztec High School shooting
The Aztec High School shooting was a school shooting and murder-suicide perpetrated by 21-year-old former student William Atchison at approximately 8:00 a.m. on December 7, 2017, in Aztec, New Mexico, United States. Atchison entered the ...
,["Verbindungen des OEZ-Attentäters David S. in die USA"](_blank)
onnections of the OEZ assassin David S. in the USA Written inquiry of Katharina Schulze from Mai 2, 2018 with answers of the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior
) is the interior ministry of Bavaria. It is headquartered in Munich, and was established on November 21, 1806 as the ''Departement des Innern''. The first Minister of the Interior was Count Maximilian von Montgelas (until 1817).
Since October 16, ...
with understanding of the Bavarian Ministry of Justice from 24 July 2018. and with a boy in Gerlingen
Gerlingen ( Swabian: ''Gaerlenge'') is a town in the district of Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated 9 km west of Stuttgart, and 15 km southwest of Ludwigsburg. Gerlingen is home to Bosch, a major engineering and ...
who planned a school shooting there. Shortly after the Munich shooting, Atchison wrote an epitaph to Sonboly on Encyclopedia Dramatica
Encyclopedia Dramatica (ED; also spelled Encyclopædia Dramatica) is a satirical online community centered around a wiki that acts as a "troll archive". The site hosts racist material and shock content; as a result it was filtered from Google ...
,Brandy Zadrozny
Brandy Zadrozny (born August 30, 1980) is an American investigative journalist and reporter with NBC News who specialises in Radicalization, political radicalization, extremism and disinformation on the Internet.
Early life and education
Before ...
, Ben Collins (Dezember 19, 2017
"New Mexico School Shooter Had Secret Life on Pro-Trump White-Supremacy Sites"
''The Daily Beast
''The Daily Beast'' is an American news website focused on politics, media, and pop culture. It was founded in 2008.
It has been characterized as a "high-end tabloid" by Noah Shachtman, the site's editor-in-chief from 2018 to 2021. In a 20 ...
''. calling him a "true Aryan" and "true German".[Martin Bernstein (Mai 15, 2018)]
"Das Netzwerk der Todesschützen"
he network of gunmen ''Süddeutsche Zeitung
The ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' (; ), published in Munich, Bavaria, is one of the largest daily newspapers in Germany. The tone of SZ is mainly described as centre-left, liberal, social-liberal, progressive-liberal, and social-democrat.
History ...
''.
Perpetrator
David Sonboly (born Ali Sonboly;[ 20 April 1998 – 22 July 2016) was an 18-year-old Iranian-German with dual nationality.] The Munich Police Department said Sonboly was born and raised in Munich and had no criminal record. He lived in an apartment in the neighbourhood of Maxvorstadt
Maxvorstadt (Central Bavarian: ''Maxvorstod'') is a central borough of Munich, Bavaria, Germany and forms the Stadtbezirk (borough) 3 Maxvorstadt. Since 1992, this borough comprises the former boroughs 5, 6 and 7 (Maxvorstadt-Universität, Maxvor ...
with his parents and younger brother. He grew up in a secular
Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...
household, according to his neighbours. He had a part-time job distributing a local free newspaper. Neighbours described him as a "polite boy".
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said that he was the son of Shiite Muslims from Iran who came to Germany as asylum seekers in the 1990s. Sonboly's parents told police that their son had possibly converted to Christianity, but that he was not religious. In May 2016, Sonboly had his first name changed in all official documents from ''Ali'' to ''David''.[
]
Possible motives
The report by the Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigation and public prosecutor's office in March 2017 concluded that the shooting was not political,["Revenge or racism? Report raises questions about Munich shooter's motives"](_blank)
The Local. 9 June 2017. saying that Sonboly's main motive was "revenge" for bullying, and that his mental illness and obsession with other shooting rampages were also a factor. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (german: Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz or BfV, often ''Bundesverfassungsschutz'') is Germany's federal domestic intelligence agency. Together with the Landesämter für Verfassungss ...
, Germany's security agency, also believed he was a "psychologically ill avenger" rather than a terrorist.["Munich shooting: Gunman had ideological motivations, say experts"](_blank)
Deutsche Welle
Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave" in English), abbreviated to DW, is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite television service con ...
, 4 October 2017.
Sonboly had undergone psychiatric treatment for depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that can develop because of exposure to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on ...
. In 2015, he had been treated for two months as an inpatient in a mental care facility. He was largely isolated from his peers and suffered years of bullying by classmates, which included physical abuse. A former classmate recalled, "We always him in school, and he always told us that he would kill us". He developed a hatred for those of a similar age and background as those who bullied him, mainly Turks and Albanians. He developed an "irrational worldview" in which he believed that the people he hated were infected with a virus and must be exterminated. On the day of the shooting, Sonboly saved a document on his computer in which he wrote "The bullying will be paid back today". During the shooting itself, he shouted that he had been bullied for seven years.
Sonboly had an obsession with mass shootings and rampage killers; he compiled a scrapbook of news clippings on mass shootings and owned several books on the subject. During his psychiatric treatment he repeatedly told fellow patients to refer to him as the 'Spree Killer'.["Munich shooter liked Nazis, Breivik, identified as Aryan, says report"](_blank)
Deutsche Welle
Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave" in English), abbreviated to DW, is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite television service con ...
, 22 July 2017. One incident that fascinated him was the Winnenden school shooting, and he visited Winnenden
Winnenden ( Swabian: ''Wẽnnede'') is a small town in the Rems-Murr district of the Stuttgart Region in Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany. It lies in a wine-growing area approx. northeast of Stuttgart and has a population of fewer than 28, ...
and took pictures there. Sonboly was also fascinated by the 2011 Norway attacks
The 2011 Norway attacks, referred to in Norway as 22 July ( no, 22. juli) or as 22/7, were two domestic terrorist attacks by neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik against the government, the civilian population, and a Workers' Youth League (AUF) ...
perpetrated by Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik
Fjotolf Hansen (born 13 February 1979), better known by his birth name Anders Behring Breivik () and by his pseudonym Andrew Berwick, is a Norwegian far-right domestic terrorist, known for committing the 2011 Norway attacks on 22 July 2011. On ...
, and Sonboly's shooting was on its fifth anniversary.
Sonboly voiced xenophobic
Xenophobia () is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an in-group and out-group and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a ...
views and support for the far-right
Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...
. ''Der Spiegel
''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
'' reported that fellow online video gamers said that Sonboly wrote anti-Turkish messages, admired Germany's right-wing AfD party, and was "very nationalistic". According to media reports, some of those who knew him said he considered himself part of the Aryan race
The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern I ...
, and boasted about sharing the same birthday as Adolf Hitler. In light of this, several politicians urged the police to focus on his possible political motives. In October 2017, a panel of three political scientists commissioned by Munich City Council concluded that Sonboly's shooting was partially driven by xenophobia and far-right ideology. Investigators, however, argued that his xenophobia stemmed from being bullied by other immigrants.
The Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigation commissioned another report into Sonboly's motives. In 2018 it concluded that the incident was a non-political shooting rampage driven by bullying, romantic rejection, and obsession with other mass shootings.
In October 2019, it was announced by the Bavarian police that the shooting was now also classified as a "politically motivated crime" that "was at least partly motivated by the right-wing extremist views of the perpetrator".
Reactions
Domestic
Bavarian State Police
The Bavarian State Police (german: Bayerische Staatliche Polizei) is the state police force of the German state of Bavaria under the umbrella of the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior. It has approximately 33,500 armed officers and roughly 8,500 o ...
urged the public not to publish online any photos or videos of the shooting. They provided a special upload platform which allowed witnesses to upload photos, audio, or video recordings directly in order to assist the investigation. Munich residents also used the Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
hashtag #''offeneTür'' (open door) to tell people in need of shelter where they could go.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel
Angela Dorothea Merkel (; ; born 17 July 1954) is a German former politician and scientist who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), she previously served as Leader of the Oppo ...
addressed the victims' families in a press conference on 23 July by saying, "We suffer with you." She thanked the Munich residents who opened their doors for stranded people. The Minister-President of Bavaria, Horst Seehofer
Horst Lorenz Seehofer (born 4 July 1949) is a German politician who served as Minister of the Interior, Building and Community under Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2018 to 2021. A member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), he served as the 18 ...
, urged extreme caution against drawing premature conclusions and noted that optimisation of the security forces had to be considered. He said that he had spent more than four hours in the operations centre on 22 July, and thanked the forces for acting with professionalism and calm. The Interior Minister of Bavaria, Joachim Herrmann, announced an investigation into why there had been numerous false alarms.
The German Depression-Help Trust (''Stiftung Deutsche Depressionshilfe'') warned of stigmatizing mentally ill people in reaction to the shooting.
After the shooter was revealed to have been born in Germany, the right-wing politician André Poggenburg was condemned and mocked in German media for having previously blamed Merkel's open refugee policy for the shooting.
International
The U.S. Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...
warned Americans in Munich to "shelter in place". President Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
said in a statement that he pledged support for those affected by the shooting.
Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec
Milan Chovanec (born 31 January 1970) is a Czech politician who served as Minister of the Interior of the Czech Republic in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka from 2014 to 2017 and served as acting Leader of the Czech Social Democrat ...
said his country would reinforce its borders to prevent the perpetrator(s) from fleeing into that country, according to German television station n-tv
n-tv is a German free-to-air television news channel owned by the Bertelsmann Media's RTL Group. n-tv broadcasts news and weather every hour and half-hour in the morning. It also broadcasts magazine shows and documentaries.
History
n-tv beg ...
.[ The Czech Foreign Ministry set up an emergency hotline and urged Czechs to avoid public places.
The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the attack. The Ministry's spokesperson, Bahram Ghassemi, expressed condolences to the German government and nation, saying, "The killing of innocent and defenseless civilians has marked another blot on the human history".]
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras
Alexis Tsipras ( el, Αλέξης Τσίπρας, ; born 28 July 1974) is a Greek politician serving as Leader of the Official Opposition since 2019. He served as Prime Minister of Greece from 2015 to 2019.
Tsipras has led the Coalition of th ...
said that having a Greek citizen among the dead "binds us even more to the fight to eradicate hatred and terrorism in Europe".
See also
* List of right-wing terrorist attacks
This is a list of right-wing terrorist attacks. Right-wing terrorism is terrorism that is motivated by a variety of different right-wing and far-right ideologies, most prominently by neo-Nazism, neo-fascism, ecofascism, white nationalism, white ...
* Emsdetten school shooting
The Emsdetten school shooting was a school shooting that occurred at the Geschwister Scholl-Schule in Emsdetten, Germany on 20 November 2006. Eighteen-year-old former student Sebastian Bosse shot and wounded five people and set off several smoke ...
* Erfurt school massacre
The Erfurt massacre was a school shooting that occurred on 26 April 2002 at the Gutenberg-Gymnasium, a secondary school in Erfurt, Germany. 19-year-old expelled student Robert Steinhäuser shot and killed 16 people, including 13 staff members, ...
* Winnenden school shooting
* 2011 Norway attacks
The 2011 Norway attacks, referred to in Norway as 22 July ( no, 22. juli) or as 22/7, were two domestic terrorist attacks by neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik against the government, the civilian population, and a Workers' Youth League (AUF) ...
, a series of attacks that occurred exactly 5 years earlier.
References
Further reading
* ''Florian Hartleb: Lone Wolves. The New Terrorism of Right-Wing Actors'', Springer Nature, Cham/Schweiz u.a., 2020, , https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030361525
External links
*
Media upload form for Bavarian State Police
{{DEFAULTSORT:Munich shooting, 2016
2016 mass shootings in Europe
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File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...
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2016
File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...
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