The gunman shot dead by police in central Munich on Thursday was 18-year-old Austrian citizen Emra I., of Bosnian origin. a police spokesman in the southern German city told reporters.

The suspect’s motives are being investigated, the spokesman added.

The shooting incident occurred earlier outside the Israeli Consulate in Munich, which is next to the Nazi Documentation Center. The gunman opened fire on police officers while according to unconfirmed information, it seems that the consul of Israel was also shot.

German police shot and killed a man in a shootout near the Israeli consulate and Nazi history museum in Munich on Thursday, the state’s interior minister said. Joaquim Herman.

“Due to the intervention of the police, the attacker was immobilized,” Herman told reporters. A police spokesman in the Bavarian state capital said the man had a “long-barreled weapon” which turned out to be an old rifle.

The incident happened on the anniversary of “Munich Massacre‘, of the 1972 attack on the Munich Olympics in which Palestinian fighters from the Black September organization murdered 11 Israeli athletes.

The gunman’s motive in Thursday’s incident was not immediately known, but Herman said police will try to determine if it had anything to do with the anniversary.

At the same time, Joachim Hermann left open the possibility that the perpetrator of the attack had targeted the adjacent Consulate General of Israel.

“We have to consider that this morning an attack may have been planned against the Consulate General of Israel,” Mr. Herman said a while ago, but clarified that the investigation into the exact motive of the attacker is ongoing.

“Munich found itself breathless for a while today. Fortunately, everything went well in the end. No one was injured, only the attacker was neutralized,” said Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Zender, who also did not rule out an anti-Semitic motive. “One thing is certain, there are serious suspicions because today is the anniversary of the attack on the 1972 Olympics. There may be a connection,” he noted, and was quick to assure that Jewish and Israeli institutions will always be protected to the highest degree.

“We are once again pledging protection to Jewish citizens, Jewish and Israeli institutions, pledging to fight, meet and then resolutely neutralize any attack,” Zender added.

According to the television stations WDR, NDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the attacker was born in 2006 in Austria and lived in Salzburg. The magazine Der Spiegel and the Austrian newspaper “Der Standard” also report that the 18-year-old was known to the Austrian authorities as an Islamist and in 2023 a complaint was made against him for participating in a terrorist organization and spreading propaganda of the “Islamic State”. The Austrian authorities had found similar material on his mobile phone, but ultimately did not proceed with prosecution.

According to an eyewitness who speaks to BILD, the police returned fire at the attacker. “It took some minutes before the first policemen chased him. Then they shot at least 30-40 times and then I heard them shout: He’s on the ground. He’s not moving anymore,” said the witness. A short time later, the Minister of the Interior of Bavaria, Joachim Herrmann, announced that the attacker had succumbed to his injuries.

Right next to the Nazi Documentation Center is the Consulate General of Israel, which was almost empty today, due to the anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist attack on Israeli athletes on September 5, 1972, during the Munich Olympics.

According to the police, the 18-year-old acted alone and used an old-fashioned Mauser repeating carbine, while also carrying a bayonet bayonet.