Terror attack rocks German city

A Syrian migrant set off a bomb near a music festival in southern Germany, killing himself and wounding 15 others in the third attack to hit the region in a week, authorities said yesterday.

Berlin has identified the assailant as a 27-year-old failed Syrian asylum seeker, and said he had made a video pledging allegiance to Islamic State.

"A provisional translation by an interpreter shows that he expressly announces, in the name of Allah, and testifying his allegiance to (Islamic State leader) Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ... an act of revenge against the Germans because they're getting in the way of Islam," Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann told a news conference.

"I think that after this video there's no doubt that the attack was a terrorist attack with an Islamist background."

Meanwhile, Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Amaq, a news agency that supports Islamic State, reports AFP.

It quoted an "insider source" as saying Sunday's attacker in the southern city of Ansbach who wounded 15 people "was a soldier of the Islamic State" who had acted "in response to calls to target nations in the coalition fighting" IS.

The attack, outside a music festival in Ansbach, a town of 40,000 people southwest of Nuremberg that has a US Army base, was the fourth act of violence by men of Middle Eastern or Asian origin against German civilians in a week, reports Reuters.

"The government is shocked by the events at the weekend," deputy government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said.

All three assaults were in Bavaria, a gateway for tens of thousands of refugees under Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal asylum policy.

Police said the man intended to target the open-air festival but was turned away as he did not have a ticket, and detonated the device outside a nearby cafe.

The perpetrator was killed in the blast, police said in a statement, and a spokeswoman said 15 people were wounded, four of them seriously.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann warned that due to the heightened security fears, it was likely that "the right to asylum would be undermined" by the events of the past week.

Sunday's explosion happened in the centre of the city of Ansbach, not far from where more than 2,500 people had gathered for the concert, at around 10 pm.

ATTACKER KNOWN TO POLICE

Police were searching a local refugee home, but a spokesman declined to say whether it was where the assailant had lived.

Ansbach deputy police chief Roman Fertinger said there were "indications" pieces of metal had been added to the explosive device.

Herrmann said the attacker, who came to Germany two years ago but had his asylum claim rejected after a year, had tried to kill himself twice in the past and had spent time in a psychiatric clinic.

The assailant, who lived in Ansbach, was already known to police, in particular for an offence linked to drugs, Herrmann also told news agency DPA.

However a social worker who knew him, Reinhold Eschenbacher, described him as "friendly, inconspicuous and nice" when he came to his office pick up his welfare benefits.

Stephan Mayer, a deputy from Merkel's conservative bloc, insisted that it was "completely wrong to blame Angela Merkel and her refugee policy" for the rash of violence.

ANTI-MIGRANT BACKLASH

Germany yesterday warned of a potential backlash against migrants after the Syrian asylum seeker blew himself up outside a music festival.

Spokeswoman Demmer warned against branding all refugees a security threat.

"Most of the terrorists who carried out attacks in recent months in Europe were not refugees," she told reporters.

"The terrorism threat (among refugees) is not larger or smaller than in the population at large."

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere also warned against placing refugees "under general suspicion", despite "individual cases that are under investigation".