Suicide bomber in Germany ‘pledged allegiance’ to IS
ANSBACH: The Syrian who blew himself up in southern Germany, wounding 15 people, had pledged allegiance to militant Islamic State group on a video found on his mobile phone, the Bavarian interior minister said on Monday.
“A provisional translation by an interpreter shows that he expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to [Islamic State leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ... an act of revenge against the Germans because they’re getting in the way of Islam,” Joachim Herrmann told a news conference. “I think that after this video there’s no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background.”
IS claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports IS.
The attack, outside a music festival in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that has a US Army base, was the fourth act of violence by men of Middle Eastern or Asian origin against German civilians in a week.
The 27-year-old arrived in Germany two years ago and claimed asylum, a federal interior ministry spokesman said. He had been in trouble with police repeatedly for drug-taking and other offences and faced deportation to Bulgaria.