2016 Ansbach bombing

2016 Ansbach bombing
Part of Terrorism in Germany (Wave of Terror in Europe and Spillover of the Syrian Civil War)
File:Ansbach - 2013 Mattes (91) 2.jpg Eugens Weinstube, where the explosion happened
Location map 15px  Site of explosion.   ☐  Venue area. ① Entrance / Ticket checkpoint Pfarrstraße. ② Entrance / Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Platz.
Location	Ansbach, Bavaria, Germany
Coordinates
Date	24 July 2016 (2016-07-24) 22:12 (CEST)
Attack type	Suicide bombing
Weapons	IED
Deaths	1 (the perpetrator)
Injured	15
Perpetrator	Mohammad Daleel

On 24 July 2016, fifteen people were injured, four seriously, in a suicide bombing outside a wine bar in Ansbach, Germany. The bomber, identified as Mohammad Daleel, was a 27-year-old Syrian refugee who had pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State. He was the only fatality in the incident. According to German authorities, Daleel was in contact with the Islamic State and had been planning more attacks before his backpack bomb exploded accidentally.

The incident followed three other attacks in Germany within a week, including a knife attack that killed a pregnant woman in Reutlingen earlier in the day, a mass shooting that killed nine people in Munich several days earlier, and a train attack in Würzburg. All of these were committed by people of Middle Eastern or Pashtun background, all of whom, save for the Munich shooter, were refugees or asylum seekers that recently came to Germany.

The Ansbach bombing was the first suicide bombing in German history, while Cüneyt Çiftçi, the perpetrator of a 2008 suicide bombing in Afghanistan, who had previously lived in Ansbach, is considered the first suicide bomber to have been born and raised in Germany.

Event

At 22:12 CEST (20:12 UTC), a bomb exploded outside Eugens Weinstube (Eugene's Wine Bar) in Ansbach, Germany and injured fifteen people, four seriously. The explosion occurred near the entrance to the Ansbach Open music festival with around 2,500 people in attendance. It was initially thought to have been caused by a gas leak. Daleel was communicating with someone online immediately before the blast. Daleel was in communication with a telephone number in Saudi Arabia minutes before the attack. He carried a backpack filled with screws, nails, and miscellaneous metal parts used in wood manufacturing and was denied entry into the music festival shortly before the blast because he had no ticket. Thereafter, witnesses say, Daleel sat outside Eugene's Wine Bar, leaned forward, and detonated an improvised explosive device. Emergency personnel arrived and attempted to resuscitate Daleel, but he was already dead.

Perpetrator

Mohammad Daleel (Arabic: محمد دليل‎‎) was a 27-year-old Syrian refugee from Aleppo who had arrived in Germany in 2014 seeking asylum. He had been registered as a refugee first in Bulgaria, then later in Austria. Normal procedure in Germany did not allow Daleel to be deported to his home country due to the ongoing Syrian civil war. As he had been registered in Bulgaria, German officials and the local court in Ansbach rejected his first asylum request on 2 December 2014 and ordered his deportation to Bulgaria. He then attempted to commit suicide twice and was under psychiatric care. Due to Daleel's mental health diagnosis, the deportation to Bulgaria was suspended. On 13 July 2016, a second deportation notice to Bulgaria was sent to Daleel.

After the bombing, Harald Weinberg from Die Linke (The Left Party) said he had intervened on behalf of Daleel in his attempted deportation to Bulgaria in 2015, one of six asylum seekers he has aided. He said he is "shocked and saddened" by the attack, "Especially since I am often at the Eugene Weinstube and am familiar with many guests there," but given what he knew at that time he believed he had done the right thing.

Bild reported that Daleel built the bomb "in the refugee center".

Aftermath

The music festival was cancelled and the immediate vicinity in which the bombing occurred was evacuated.

Investigation

German authorities have found a video showing Daleel pledging allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and intending to attack Germans on his phone. Multiple cell phones, SIM cards, a notebook, and six Facebook accounts with Islamist material that belonged to Daleel were also discovered and under investigation. Furthermore, inside the asylum accommodation in which the attacker lived, materials for bomb building were uncovered. Joachim Herrmann, the Bavarian interior minister, said that "it is unquestionable that it is a terror attack with corresponding Islamist convictions of the perpetrator."

Less than an hour after media reported that the attacker had made a pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Amaq News Agency called him an Islamic State fighter who executed the operation in response to calls to target countries of the coalition that fights Islamic State.

Reactions

As a result of the recent attacks in Germany, the hashtag #Merkelsommer and phrase "Merkel summer" trended on Twitter starting on 25 July 2016 and appeared in other social media. Experts believed that the recent attacks could create an anti-foreigner sentiment in the country, thus presenting criticism and pressure for Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany since 2005.

Joachim Herrmann acknowledged that it was "a very terrible week, as I think it was for most of the people in Bavaria." He said that German authorities would investigate ways to prevent abuse of the asylum system.

See also

• List of Islamist terrorist attacks
• Wave of Terror in Europe
• Ansbach school attack
• Munich knife attack (10 May 2016)
• Immigration and crime in Germany