A 43-year-old German, who published a manifesto calling for the "total extermination" of many "races or cultures in our environment", killed nine people, mostly Turks, in an attack on a hookah bar and other locations in the town of Hanau near Frankfurt, they said. German authorities.
The attacker was later found dead in the house along with his 72-year-old mother. It is believed that he killed his mother and then committed suicide. The authorities stated that they are treating the attack as an act of domestic terrorism.
On Wednesday evening, the attacker first attacked a hookah bar and a cafe in Hanau where he killed several people, then he traveled 2,5 kilometers and continued to shoot at a car and then at a sports cafe where he killed more people.
The bloodshed comes as fears of right-wing violence grow in Germany and authorities step up efforts to crack down on it, including last week's crackdown in which 12 people were arrested on suspicion of plotting attacks on politicians and members of minorities.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said the new attack exposed the "poison" of racism in Germany, and vowed to stand up to those who want to divide the country.
"Racism is poison, hatred is poison. And that poison exists in our society, from the actions of the NSU, the murder of Walter Liebke, to the murders in Halle," said the chancellor, referring to a series of murders and attacks by a neo-Nazi trio from the National Socialist Underground (NSU) during the 2000s, the murder of a pro-immigrant councilor in June, and the attack on the synagogue last October.
"Everything will be done to investigate the circumstances of these horrible murders," Merkel said, adding that much indicates that the perpetrator acted out of hatred for a different origin, a different religion and a different appearance.
Federal prosecutors said they took over the case because the motive was likely of an extremist nature, and the Bild newspaper reported that the suspect had expressed right-wing views on the Internet. Among the victims are five Turkish citizens, Turkish officials announced.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the attack "heinous" and said he was confident that the German authorities "will make maximum efforts to shed light on all aspects of this attack." The Association of Kurdistan Communities in Germany said Kurds were among the victims, expressing anger that German political leaders "did not resolutely confront right-wing networks and right-wing terrorism."
German federal prosecutor Peter Frank said that all nine victims were of foreign origin and that six more people were injured in the attack, one of whom is in critical condition.
Investigators said the attacker most likely acted alone, but Frank said that "the goal of the investigation is to find out if there are people who knew about or supported the attacks." He added, as reported by Reuters, that he would investigate the contacts the killer had inside or outside of Germany. Kadir Kose, who ran from a nearby cafe when he heard the first shots in the hookah bar, said he was stunned by the scale of the violence. He told the AP agency that fights are not unusual, but that "this is something completely different, something we hear about happening in America."
In Germany, home to three million people of Turkish origin, including one million ethnic Kurds, the political scene has become polarized in recent years, with a wave of immigration and a weakening economy contributing to a rise in support for extremist groups. In October, an anti-Semitic gunman opened fire outside a German synagogue, killing two people while streaming the attack online.
Authorities have banned some right-wing groups that advocate violence, while Germany's centrist political consensus has been undermined by growing support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), particularly in the former communist eastern provinces. Deputy Chancellor, Social Democrat Olaf Scholz stated that 75 years after the Nazi dictatorship, right-wing terror is returning. "We must defend our liberal democracy," Scholz tweeted.
Called for the extermination of half the world's population
The German authorities identified the attacker as Tobias R. and confirmed that he published extremist videos and manifestos with "confusing messages and conspiracy theories" on his website. On a website believed to belong to the attacker, a man identifying himself as Tobias Rathjen claims to have presented his conspiracy theories to the police on several occasions. The authorities, however, said that the attacker had no criminal record and was not under the surveillance of the domestic intelligence service.
Among the documents published on the site, which has been discontinued, is a 24-page manifesto in which, among other things, the attacker expresses fears that he has been under surveillance by the authorities for years. He claims that because he is under police surveillance, he cannot have relations with women. Rathjen also calls for genocide.
"We now have ethnic groups, races, cultures in our environment that are destructive in every way," he wrote. He stated that he had a vision of a "rough cleaning" and then a "thorough cleaning" that would cut the world's population in half. "The peoples of the following countries should be completely exterminated: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the entire Arabian Peninsula, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines”.
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