HAMBURG — A man driving a van plowed into a crowd in the northern German city of Münster on Saturday afternoon, killing at least three people and injuring dozens before shooting himself, a senior German security official said.
German security officials were unsure whether the incident had connections to terrorism. The senior security official said that police were conducting response measures as though it were a terrorist attack, but that they remained uncertain about whether it was one. Police also dispatched a bomb squad to the scene to check whether there were explosives in the van, the senior security official said.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the unfolding details of the case.
“There are dead and injured. Please avoid the area,” the North Rhine-Westphalia regional police wrote on their official Twitter account. “We are on site.” The police told people to avoid the city center.
Images of the city center showed a small delivery van that appeared to have hopped onto a sidewalk off the street and plowed through the seats and tables of an outdoor cafe. Chairs were scattered and broken across a small cobblestone plaza. The incident took place at the square surrounding the Kiepenkerl statue, a city landmark that commemorates a traveling peddler.
“Terrible news from Münster,” wrote German Justice Minister Katarina Barley on Twitter. “Our thoughts are with the victims and their family members. Thank you to the rescue workers on the scene. We must do everything to clarify the background of the incident.”
The Kiepenkerl area is dotted with boutiques, high-end shops and cafés, and is a favorite of both tourists and locals. Saturday was the warmest day of the year, with weather hitting 76 degrees in the city of 300,000, drawing people onto the streets to lounge in the sunshine.
Local news outlets said that police were already deployed in larger-than-normal numbers in the city center that afternoon to keep watch over a pro-Kurdish demonstration. When the van plowed across the square mid-afternoon, officers were able to divert quickly.
Vehicles have been used in terrorist attacks across Europe in recent years, including in Germany. In December 2016, a Tunisian man whose asylum request had been rejected crashed a truck through a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring 56.
The incident in Münster also came a year to the day after a man driving a stolen delivery truck slammed into a crowd in Stockholm, killing four.
Birnbaum reported from Brussels.
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