Alwaght- At least three people have been killed and 20 others injured after a van drove into a crowd in the western German city of Munster.
The driver shot himself dead inside the van, said Andreas Bode, a spokesman for the police.
He said the driver’s identity was not yet known.
The van crashed into people sitting in front of the famous Grosser Kiepenkerl bar in the city’s old town district. Six of the 20 injured were in severe condition, Mr Bode added.
Police said a suspicious object was found in the van and they were examining what it is and whether it is dangerous. They told German news agency dpa the object was the reason a large area around the scene was sealed off after the crash.
According to police, rumors were circulating that two more people jumped out of the van and fled. A police spokesman said investigators were working to verify the reports.
The mayor of Muenster, Markus Lewe, said the reason for the crash was still unclear. He told reporters “all of Munster is mourning this horrible incident.
Erich Rettinghaus, head of the German police union in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), where Muenster is located, told the Rheinische Post newspaper that the whole of Germany was faced with a new risk of attacks, and now NRW has been hit. He said that up until now “we had luckily always been able to prevent planned attacks, but this time we didn’t succeed.”
He said the main priority was now to find and detain possible accomplices of the attacker to “avoid further potential attacks”. In December 2016 a lorry ploughed into a crowd at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people.
