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A mother, 37, and her two-year-old daughter have died from injuries they sustained in Thursday’s car attack in the German city of Munich, police say.

At least 37 people were injured when a car was driven into a crowd of people at a trade union rally.

The driver was a 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, police said, identified in local media as Farhad N.

He was arrested at the scene and prosecutors say he has admitted to carrying out the attack. He appeared to have a religious motivation, officials said.

The mother and child were among those taken to hospital with serious injuries following the attack.

Authorities have said the suspect arrived in Germany in 2016 and, although his application for asylum was turned down, he was allowed to stay in Germany as he faced risks being deported back to Afghanistan. He had a valid residence and work permit.

He had no previous criminal record, and police said there was no evidence of a link to a jihadist group. He also appears to have acted alone, German authorities say.

On Friday, police said the suspect told officers during questioning that he had driven his Mini Cooper car intentionally into the crowd.

Munich public prosecutor Gabriele Tilmann told reporters that the suspect had said “Allahu Akbar” – God is greatest in Arabic – when he was detained. She suggested he “may have had an Islamist motivation”.

Campaigning around Germany’s election on 23 February has for weeks been embroiled in a fevered debate about migration. It was called due to the collapse of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government last year.

A number of violent incidents linked to migrants over the past year have led to increased support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

In December, six people were killed and at least 299 injured after a man drove a car into a German Christmas market.

The suspect was a 50-year-old Saudi asylum seeker who had been an outspoken critic of Islam.

And in January an attack that shocked the country saw a two-year-old child and a passer-by who attempted to intervene killed after a group of children were stabbed in a park in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg.

The suspect in that attack is a 28-year-old Afghan asylum seeker. (BBC)

Germany’s former Chancellor Angela Merkel has criticised her own party leader for passing a motion in parliament with support from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

In a statement, Merkel accused CDU leader Friedrich Merz of turning his back on a previous pledge not to work with AfD in the Bundestag.

The parliament descended into heckles on Wednesday after votes from the far-right party meant a non-binding CDU motion on tougher immigration rules was passed.

This is a highly unusual intervention by the woman who led Germany for 16 years, stepping in to criticise the actions of her former political rival.

Merz, who is tipped to be Germany’s next chancellor due to CDU’s lead in the polls, said on Wednesday that a policy was not wrong just because the “wrong people back it” and that he had not sought nor wanted AfD’s support.

But Merkel accused him of breaking a pledge he made in November to work with the Social Democratic Party and the Greens to pass legislation, not AfD.

This was to ensure “neither in determining the agenda nor in voting on the matter here in the House will there be a random or actually brought about majority with those from the AfD,” read a quote from Merz in Merkel’s statement.

The former chancellor said she fully supported this earlier “expression of great state political responsibility”.

“I think it is wrong to no longer feel bound by this proposal and thereby knowingly allow the AfD to gain a majority in a vote in the German Bundestag on 29 January 2025 for the first time.”

She said “all democratic parties” needed to work together “to do everything they can to prevent such terrible attacks in the future as those that took place shortly before Christmas in Magdeburg and a few days ago in Aschaffenburg”.

This is a rare intervention from Merkel.

To openly criticise her own party’s candidate for chancellor – just weeks out from an election – is a big move and will add rocket fuel to a an already explosive story in German politics.

Merkel and Merz go back a long way – and not as the best of friends.

He was famously side-lined by Merkel in the early 2000s after she won out in a CDU power struggle.

Merz would go on to quit front-line politics for many years before making his return. (BBC)

Tag: Germany

Mother and child die from injuries after Munich car attack

Merkel criticises her party leader after far-right vote