LAST UPDATE | 5 Sep

GERMAN AUTHORITIES ARE treating a shooting near Munich’s Israeli consulate today as a failed attack on the diplomatic mission.

The gunman, who was shot dead by police after he had opened fire with a vintage rifle, was an 18-year-old Austrian man.

German news site Spiegel Online and Austrian media said that he had been investigated last year for allegedly spreading Islamic State group propaganda, but that the case had been dropped.

While the motive was not yet known, Bavarian state premier Markus Soeder said “there is a terrible suspicion” the case was linked to Thursday’s anniversary of the deadly 1972 attack on Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich by Palestinian militants.

The shootout around 9am (7am GMT) sparked a mass mobilisation of about 500 police in downtown Munich, where residents and office workers huddled indoors as sirens wailed and a helicopter flew above.

Video footage published by German media showed dramatic scenes in which police commandos in body armour and helmets took cover from gunshots, then unleashed a barrage of bullets.

Police said five police officers fired at the man, who died on the spot with his weapon beside him – a rifle that pictures showed was fitted with a bayonet.

Munich police wrote on social media platform X that, after the shooting, there were “no indications of any other suspects” and that no one else was wounded.

In a statement on X, Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressed “horror” at what he described as a “terror attack”.

“I spoke now with President of Germany, my dear friend Frank-Walter Steinmeier,” he wrote.

“Together we expressed our shared condemnation and horror at the terror attack this morning near the Israeli consulate in Munich.”

I spoke now with President of Germany, my dear friend Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Together we expressed our shared condemnation and horror at the terror attack this morning near the Israeli consulate in Munich.

On the day our brothers and sisters in Munich were set to stand in…

— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) September 5, 2024

The Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism is located on the site of the former Nazi party headquarters and close to Israel’s consulate in the southern German city.

Police advised the public that a large number of police were “on their way to the site of operations in the area of the NS Documentation Centre”.

“To ensure that they can work without hindrance, we ask that you avoid this area as much as possible.”