One person has been killed and another 12 people injured after a “deliberate explosion” outside a music festival in the German town of Ansbach.

Authorities said the person who died – a 27-year-old Syrian who had been denied asylum – is believed to have set off the explosion.

The man was reported to have been carrying a backpack at the time of the blast, at about 10pm on Sunday.

Three of those injured are believed to be in a serious condition.

The mayor of Ansbach, a town near Nuremberg in Bavaria, told reporters the blast had been caused deliberately.

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Attacker who died in a blast outside a music festival in southern Germany injured 12 others, three seriously
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Police later added: “An explosion went off in the city centre and a man, which the latest enquiries show caused it, was killed in the event.”

As many as 2,500 people are said to have been attending the music festival at the time of the explosion. The entire area has been evacuated and the festival cancelled.

Emergency workers and vehicles in Ansbach ton centre after the explosion.
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Emergency workers and vehicles in Ansbach ton centre after the explosion. Photograph: Reuters Tv/Reuters
Police have blocked off the city centre and emergency services were on the scene. Bomb experts were on their way to determine the cause of the explosion.

The explosion, which followed the killing on Friday of nine people by an 18-year-old gunman in Munich, occurred at a wine bar called Eugene’s, the Nürnberger Nachrichten newspaper reported. A music festival was taking place in the town on Sunday.

Police had said earlier the explosion might have been caused by a gas leak.

But a spokesman for the Bavarian interior ministry later said the explosion was not an accident and appeared to have been intentional.


The interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, is travelling to the scene, the spokesman said.

“The explosion was set off deliberately,” said Michael Siefener, a spokesman for the regional interior ministry, adding that authorities were trying to establish the exact cause.

Ansbach police said in a statement that just after 10pm on Sunday they were alerted to an explosion in the city centre.

Germany, and Bavaria in particular, have been on edge after a deadly rampage at a Munich mall on Friday in which nine people were killed, and an axe attack on a train near Wuerzburg last Monday in which five people were wounded.

Both came shortly after a Tunisian man in a truck killed 84 people when he ploughed through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, on the French Riviera.

Bavarian public broadcaster Bayerische Rundfunk reported that about 200 police officers and 350 rescue personnel were brought in following the explosion in Ansbach.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/25/bomb-attack-southern-germany