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Several Dead in Münster, Germany, Amid Reports of Van Crashing Into Crowd Three Dead in Münster, Germany, Amid Reports of Van Crashing Into Crowd
(35 minutes later)
Several people were killed and many others injured on Saturday in Münster, in western Germany, after a van crashed into a group of people in the heart of the old city, according to the police and news media reports. Three people were killed and many others injured on Saturday in Münster, in western Germany, after the driver of a small truck crashed into a group of people in the heart of the old city, the police said.
A spokeswoman for the Münster police told Die Welt, a newspaper, that the driver of the van killed himself after the crash. The driver killed himself after the crash, Viola Gross, a spokeswoman for the Münster police said. “We are still trying to determine how he died,” she said.
The police said on Twitter that they had closed the area and had urged people to leave in order to allow access for emergency services. The police repeatedly urged people on Twitter to stop speculating about the circumstances of the crash, insisting that it was too soon to determine its cause.
The crash occurred outside the Kiepenkerl, a restaurant on a cobble-stoned street in the center of the city that is popular with locals and tourists, the police said. It is not in a pedestrian zone, but has wide sidewalks where people had been sitting outside on a sunny, spring afternoon, news reports said. While the authorities refused to say whether they believed the crash could be a deliberate attack, it evoked comparisons to the December 2016 truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people.
Germany was targeted in several attacks by Islamist extremists in 2015 and 2016, and officials have expressed concern about people who have returned to the country after fighting for the Islamic State in Syria or Iraq. Officials with the country’s Federal Criminal Office believe that 980 Germans left the country to join the fight with ISIS and may be seeking to return.
Saturday’s crash occurred outside the Kiepenkerl, a restaurant on a cobble-stoned street in the center of the city that is popular with locals and tourists, the police said. It is not in a pedestrian zone, but the area has wide sidewalks where people had been sitting outside on a sunny, spring afternoon, police said.
Images from Münster showed bands of red-and-white police tape and rows of police vans that cordoned off the old city. The authorities urged people to leave in order to allow access for emergency services.
“We are here. Please stay away from the Old City,” the Münster police wrote on Twitter. “Respect the victims. First-responders are treating the injured.”
Germany’s new interior minister, Horst Seehofer, said that federal authorities were in contact with the police in North Rhine-Westphalia, where Münster is. He expressed his condolences to the victims’ families.