Syrian asylum seeker blows himself up in Germany

Ansbach. Germany. A failed Syrian asylum seeker has blown himself up and injured 12 other people with a backpack bomb near a festival in the south German town of Ansbach.

The state of Bavaria's interior minister said the 27-year-old man had detonated the device after being refused entry to the music festival.

About 2,500 people were evacuated from the venue after the explosion.

Bavaria has been on edge since a knife rampage on a train claimed by so-called Islamic State last Monday.

The Ansbach blast is reported to have happened at about 22:10 (20:10 GMT) outside the Eugens Weinstube bar in the centre of the town, which has a population of 40,000 and is home to a US military base.

The bomb went off close to the entrance to the Ansbach Open music festival.

A witness, Thomas Debinski, reported "panic" after the explosion, although some people had thought it was caused by a gas explosion.

"Then people came past and said it was a rucksack that had exploded," he told Sky News.

Three of the injured were in a serious condition, police said.

Security services have sealed off the city centre and experts are trying to establish the kind of explosives the bomber used.

Seven deadly days

A week of bloody attacks involving migrants has frayed nerves in Germany, which led the way in accepting asylum seekers from Syria. To date, only the first has been linked to a militant group:

• 18 July: An axe-wielding teenage asylum seeker from Afghanistan is shot dead after injuring five people in an attack on a train. IS claims the attack, releasing a video recorded by the attacker before the incident

• 22 July: A German teenager of Iranian extraction goes on a shooting rampage in the Bavarian state capital, Munich, killing nine people, most of them migrants, before shooting himself. He is said to have been obsessed with school shootings

• 24 July: A Syrian asylum seeker is arrested in the town of Reutlingen, Baden-Wuerttemberg, after allegedly killing a Polish woman with a machete and injuring two other people. Police suggest it was probably a "crime of passion"

• 24 July: A failed Syrian asylum seeker blows himself up outside a music festival in the small Bavarian town of Ansbach, injuring 12 other people. Motive not immediately clear

Failed asylum bid

The Syrian man entered Germany two years ago and had his asylum claim rejected a year ago, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said.

He had been given leave to stay temporarily given the situation in his home country and provided with an apartment in Ansbach, Mr Herrmann added.

The minister said he was "incensed" by the attack which, he continued, demonstrated the need to "strengthen controls on those we have living in our country".

Mr Herrmann said the man had been known to have tried to take his own life twice and had spent time in a psychiatric clinic.

"We don't know if this man planned on suicide or if he had the intention of killing others," he said.

However, the bomb in the backpack would have been sufficient to kill and injure many more people, he added.

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

BBC