A Syrian man whose request for asylum had been rejected in Germany recorded a cellphone video of himself pledging allegiance to the ultra-hardline group ISIS before he tried to get into an outdoor concert with a bomb-loaded backpack.
He was turned away and detonated himself up outside a wine bar instead, injuring 15 people, authorities said Monday.ISIS later claimed responsibility for the attack.
It was the fourth attack to shake Germany in a week — three of them carried out by recent migrants.
The 27-year-old, whom authorities have not identified, set off an explosives and shrapnel loaded backpack Sunday night after being refused entry to the nearby festival in the Bavarian city of Ansbach because he didn’t have a ticket.
Bavarian authorities said a video found on the Ansbach bomber’s phone showed him pledging allegiance to the ISIS. Germany’s top security official, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, had said it was too early to rule out terrorism as a motive, but noted that the suspect had twice attempted suicide and had been receiving psychological care.
“Or it could be a combination of both,” de Maiziere explained.
The attack was carried out by “one of the soldiers of ISIS,” the extremist group said in a statement.
The ISIS-linked Aamaq news agency reported that the man carried out the attack in response to calls by the group to target countries of the U.S.-led coalition that is fighting ISIS.
The bombing was the latest of the recent attacks that have heightened concerns about how Germany can deal with the estimated 1 million migrants who entered the country last year.
Those fears had vanished as the numbers of new arrivals had slowed this year dramatically, but already the nationalist Alternative for Germany party and others have seized on the attacks as evidence that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s migration policies are flawed.
A 17-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker injured five with an ax before being killed by police near Wuerzburg last week in an attack that was claimed by ISIS.
On Sunday a Syrian man killed a woman with a knife in the southwestern city of Reutlingen before being captured by police in an incident that authorities say was not likely linked to terrorism.
In between, the 18-year-old son of Iranian dual national went on a rampage Friday night at a Munich mall, killing nine and wounding dozens. Authorities say he was undergoing psychological treatment and had no known links to terrorism.
The attack in Ansbach, a serene city of about 40,000 west of Nuremberg, came near the end of the closing night of a popular open air festival being attended by about 2,000 people.
Following the Munich mall shooting, city officials had ordered extra security and bag checks at the entrance of the venue, but the man never got that far, being turned away for lack of a ticket, Mayor Carda Seidel said.