A fire at a detached house in northern Munich and explosions in the area set off a large emergency operation on Wednesday, with police and firefighters blocking roads.
A police investigation, triggered by a note on the suspect’s person mentioning the world-renowned Oktoberfest beer festival, led to the event’s opening being delayed.
But by mid-afternoon, Munich’s Mayor Dieter Reiter said the festival would reopen at 5:30 p.m. local time (1530 GMT/UTC), after police found no signs of danger at the city center site in the Theresienwiese.
Munich Oktoberfest reopens after bomb threat
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What do we know about the police operation in Munich?
Police investigating the house said explosive traps were also detected in the affected building; the suspect’s van was also booby trapped and was set on fire during the response, an officer later clarified.
“Special forces were called in for defusing. We are on site with numerous emergency response personnel,” police said in a statement on X on Wednesday morning.
“According to the current state of knowledge, the residential building was deliberately set on fire in the context of a family dispute,” police said.
Police believe that the suspect, a 57-year-old man, set the house on fire before committing suicide near a lake in the vicinity in the Lerchenau district of northern Munich. A police helicopter tracked him fleeing the scene of the fire. He had explosives in a backpack he was carrying which needed to be defused.
The suspect’s 81-year-old mother and 21-year-old daughter were both injured and were receiving hospital treatment, police said.
Meanwhile, Munich Police President Thomas Hampel said at a press conference on Wednesday evening that authorities knew a dead body, who they presumed to be the suspect’s 90-year-old father, was still lying in the burning house. Because of the intense residual heat, it was still not safe for them to enter the buidling, Hampel said.
Why was the Oktoberfest opening delayed?
Police had posted that an investigation was underway involving possible links to other parts of the city, including the Theresienwiese festival grounds.
“We are currently investigating in all directions. Possible connections to other locations in Munich are being examined, including the Theresienwiese. For this reason, the opening of the festival grounds is delayed.”
Munich authorities said the grounds were shut down as a precaution after a letter was found on the suspect’s person, which mentioned the event.
Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said later on Wednesday that there were no signs of a political motive or extremism involved in the deaths and explosion in the Bavarian capital that led to the temporary closing of the Oktoberfest beer festival.
Instead, he said preliminary investigations pointed to a fight inside the family over issues that included the suspect’s paternity of his daughter.
The suspect had filed petitions with city authorities related to these problems, Herrmann said, albeit noting that the case remained very nascent and the investigation was continuing.
Investigators briefly also probed a possible extremist link to the explosions after a post on the indymedia.org website boasted of the destruction of high-end cars and claimed responsibility for arson and assaults under the title “Antifa means attack.” But they found this to be an unconnected coincidence.
Police said a total of more than 500 officers were on the case on Wednesday, many of them carrying out precautionary checks at and around the Oktoberfest site, given the note mentioning the event written by the suspect.
You can follow more updates on this story in our daily Germany news blog here.
Edited by Wesley Dockery
