Shock vid shows gunman, 18, wielding ‘World War 2 rifle with bayonet’ before police shootout in Munich ‘terror attack’
SHOCKING footage shows the suspected Munich shooter brandishing a World War Two style rifle with a blade attached before he was gunned down by police.
The gunman, reportedly 18, exchanged fire with cops near the Israeli consulate and a Nazi-era museum in what Israel later branded a “terror attack”.
Chilling video showed a young man stalking the streets with the huge rifle before exchanging fire with cops.
He paces up and down outside a building, brandishing the long gun with a large metal blade – known as a bayonet – attached to its end.
Further footage showed armed police in bulletproof vests later shooting at the same building – with the gunmen out of sight.
The shooting took place on the 52nd anniversary of the Munich Olympic attacks – when Palestinian gunmen killed 11 Israeli athletes in 1972.
The attacker – shot dead at the scene – had travelled from Austria to Germany, outlets Standard and Spiegel reported.
A police spokesperson said the man had a “long-barrelled gun” that BILD later reported was a WW2-style weapon.
The gunman’s motivation is not immediately clear, but officials said police would try to clarify whether it was linked to the anniversary.
Officers had spotted someone carrying a “long gun” in the Karolinenplatz area in the city centre at around 9am near a Nazi history museum.
“Due to the intervention of the police, the perpetrator was stopped,” state Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann later told press.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog wrote on X today: “I spoke now with President of Germany, my dear friend Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
“Together we expressed our shared condemnation and horror at the terror attack this morning near the Israeli consulate in Munich.”
Herzog said that on the day of remembrance for the Olympics massacre, “a hate-fuelled terrorist came and once again sought to murder innocent people”.
The suspect was known to cops as an Islamist and lived in Austria’s Salzburg area near the border with Bavaria, according to local news reports.
Local residents told German outlet Süddeutsche Zeitung that they heard gunshots and police sirens as dozens of cops rushed to the scene.
One said shouts of “run, run” could be heard as the chaos unfolded.
Benedikt Franke, deputy chairman and CEO of the Munich Security Conference (MSC) told BILD that his office – next to the museum – was cordoned off.
He said “at least a dozen shots could be heard”.
The Israeli foreign ministry said the consulate was closed on Thursday for a commemoration of the 1972 massacre and no one from the staff was injured in the incident.
The nearby museum, which focuses on the history of Germany’s 1933-45 Nazi regime, is located near the Israeli consulate in Munich’s Maxvorstadt neighbourhood.