Third attack by migrant in three months heightens tensions ahead of German election

A 24-year-old Afghan man plowed a white Mini Cooper into a crowd in Munich on Thursday, injuring at least 28 people in the third attack by a migrant in Germany in three months.

The incident comes just 10 days before nationwide elections in which the German far right is on track for its biggest victory since World War II, with polls showing the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland party, or AfD, cruising to a strong second-place finish behind Friedrich Merz’s conservative coalition.

Bavarian Premier Markus Söder — from the sister party in Merz’s center-right alliance — described Thursday’s incident as a likely “terrorist attack.”

In January, a 28-year-old Afghan man wielding a knife attacked a group of preschool children in a park in the southern city of Aschaffenburg, killing two, including a 2-year-old boy. In December, a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian national rammed a BMW into a crowded holiday market in the eastern city of Magdeburg, killing six and injuring 300.

Thursday’s assault came the same day another Afghan migrant in his 20s with suspected jihadist motives went on trial for allegedly killing a police officer and wounding five others in a stabbing rampage at an anti-Islam rally in the western city of Mannheim last May.

Despite ruling out any alliance with the AfD, Merz’s coalition and the far-right party voted together to nearly pass legislation last month calling on Germany to turn back far more migrants at its border. The AfD, meanwhile, has pledged to fight for mass deportations under a policy Europe’s anti-immigrant parties are calling “remigration.”

“The safety of the people in Germany will be our top priority. We will consistently enforce law and order,” Merz wrote in a post on X in response to the attack. “Everyone must feel safe in our country again. Something must change in Germany.”