Gunman killed near Israeli consulate in Munich believed to be planning terrorist attack: Police
(LONDON) — A “suspicious person” was shot dead by Munich police near the Israeli consulate in what authorities said they believe was a planned terrorist attack.
The incident occurred in the Karolinenplatz area of the southern German city on Thursday morning.
Munich’s police force said in a statement on social media that officers deployed to the scene encountered an armed 18-year-old suspect and engaged him in a shootout.
“The suspect was fatally injured,” police said. “There are still no indications of further suspects or other injured persons.”
The 18-year-old suspect was an Austrian citizen living in Austria who did not have a permanent residence in Germany, Munich police said. He was carrying an “older carbine with attached bayonet” when shot, officials said. The suspect parked a car near the crime scene, police said.
“At present, it is assumed that the attack was a terrorist attack, also with reference to the Consulate General of the State of Israel, with one focus of the ongoing investigation being the suspect’s motivation for the crime,” the Munich police said in a statement translated by The Associated Press.
Police added they are still investigating the suspect’s alleged motive.
The area was cordoned off with a helicopter in the air above the scene, the force said. Police later issued an “all clear” statement assuring people in the area that “there is no longer any danger to the population.”
The shooting occurred next to the city’s Nazi Documentation Center, police said. Authorities urged residents to “avoid this area as much as possible” as the investigation continued, and warned of road closures and disruption to nearby public transit routes.
The Nazi Documentation Center is one of the city’s most popular museums, located midway between the famous Karolinenplatz and Königsplatz squares just northwest of the medieval old town. It is less than 500 feet from the Israeli consulate.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed there had been a “shooting incident” close to the consulate, noting the facility was closed on Thursday coinciding with the anniversary of the deadly terror attack at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.
“No one from the consulate staff was injured in the incident,” the ministry’s spokesperson said. “The shooter was neutralized by the German security forces and the incident is under their care.”
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Victoria Beaule and Dana Savir contributed to this report.
(VIENNA, Austria) — Chemical substances and technical devices were found at the house of a 19-year-old Austrian suspected of planning an attack on upcoming Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna, Austria, the public security director at Austria’s Ministry of Interior, Franz Ruf, told public broadcaster ORF’s Oe1 program in an interview Thursday.
Ruf added that these are still being evaluated by investigators. He previously confirmed during a press conference on Wednesday that chemical substances had been secured and were being evaluated.
Three of Swift’s concerts scheduled this week in Vienna were canceled after two suspects were arrested Wednesday for allegedly plotting a terror attack, authorities said.
The cancellations came hours after authorities announced a 19-year-old Austrian citizen was arrested Wednesday morning and a second suspect was arrested in the afternoon.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky, Felix Franz, Will Gretsky, Emily Shapiro, Josh Margolin and Luke Barr contributed to this report.
(JERUSALEM and LONDON) — Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader who was assassinated early Wednesday in Iran, was a longtime antagonist of Israel who rose to become leader of the Palestinian organization’s political bureau, expanded the group’s footprint outside the Gaza Strip and served as a key figure in the negotiations to end the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
He had long been accused by Western and Israeli leaders of having strong ties to the Hamas organization’s miltary wing, which claimed responsibility last year for the Oct. 7 surprise attack on southern Israel. He had been detained by Israel in 1989 and spent three years in an Israel prison before eventually rising to the top of the Hamas group.
Haniyeh had been a part of talks as Israel and Hamas negotiated for an end to the fighting in Gaza and a return to the hostages held by Hamas. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday declined to comment on the assassination or how it may affect those negotiations, saying it was an “enduring imperative to getting a cease-fire, and what I do know is we are going to work at that every day.”
“All I can tell you right now is I think nothing takes away from the importance of, as I said a moment ago, getting to the cease-fire, which is manifestly in the interests of the hostages and bringing them home,” Blinken told reporters in Singapore.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the assassination.
Haniyeh had led Hamas political bureau since 2017
As the civil-focused Hamas branch won in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in 2006, sweeping into power throughout Gaza, Haniyeh was named prime minister.
Israel in 2007 accused then-Prime Minister Haniyeh of “adherence to an ‘armed struggle'” against Israel. The Israeli Foreign Ministry quoted Haniyeh as saying, “We are concentrating on politics but have not abandoned our arms.”
Haniyeh was dismissed after a year in office by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, took control of the security services centers in Gaza. Haniyeh rejected the decision because he considered it “unconstitutional” and described it as hasty, stressing that “his government will continue its duties and will not abandon its national responsibilities towards the Palestinian people.”
The Palestinian Authority, another civil group in Gaza, was expelled from the territory in 2007, according to The U.S. Department of State. The U.S. described the political maneuvering by Hamas as a “violent takeover.”
Ten years later, in 2017, Haniyeh became leader of the Hamas political group, which by then was the “de facto ruler” in Gaza, the U.S. said. Members of the General Shura Council elected him in voting held simultaneously in the Qatari capital, Doha, and in Gaza.
Haniyeh when he came to power was in charge of the civil wing the of the Hamas organization, the branch that manages “charities, schools, clinics, youth camps, fundraising, and political activities,” as the U.S. State Department described it.
The following year, in January 2018, during the Trump administration, Haniyeh was placed on a U.S. government terrorism list, an official designation that named him as an individual associated with terror. His addition on that list would allow the U.S. government to block his assets under a Bush administration executive order.
“Ismail Haniyeh is the leader and President of the Political Bureau of Hamas. Haniyeh has close links with Hamas’s military wing and has been a proponent of armed struggle, including against civilians,” the U.S. Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism said in a 2018 report.
A State Department spokesperson at the time said Haniyeh had “reportedly been involved in terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. Hamas has been responsible for an estimated 17 American lives killed in terrorist attacks.”
Haniyeh had in the years since then called for Arab states to stop recognizing Israel by terminating agreements to normalize relations, according to a 2023 report on international religious freedom compiled by U.S. officials.
He had lived in exile since 2019 in Qatar, an Arab country that has played a key role in the Israel-Hamas negotiations.
Rise to power from a Gaza refugee camp
Born in 1963 in the Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City, Haniyeh attended schools within and near the camp. He graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza in 1987, obtaining a degree in Arabic literature. He received an honorary doctorate from the Islamic University in 2009, according to the school. After graduating, he worked as a teaching assistant at the university, and then took over administrative affairs after that.
Haniyeh began his activity within the “Islamic Bloc,” which represented the student arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, from which the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas” emerged.
Haniyeh was widely considered to be a charismatic, popular and pragmatic leader within the Hamas movement. He was respected by many Palestinians when he became the first Palestinian prime minister for the Hamas movement and he refused to leave his simple home at a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
The Hamas movement over the years lost dozens of its leaders in Israeli assassinations in Gaza, the West Bank and abroad, but those deaths have not appeared to weaken the movement. Israeli killed the founding and spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and many top leaders in the second intifada from 2001 to 2005, but in fact did not appear to diminish the movement.
Three of Haniyeh’s sons and many of his grandchildren, in addition to other relatives, have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the ongoing war with Israel broke out on Oct. 7.
ABC News’ Lauren Minore and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
(PALERMO, Sicily) — Authorities investigating the sinking of a superyacht off the Sicilian coast that claimed the lives of seven people said a manslaughter probe has been launched in the case.
“We have opened a file against unknown persons with the hypothesis of negligent shipwreck manslaughter,” Ambrogio Cartosio, the chief prosecutor of the Sicilian town Termini Imerese, said Saturday at a press conference.
Cartosio added, “We are taking care to keep the investigation secret as this is the law.”
The prosecutor said the ship’s captain, who survived the sinking, is not currently detained but asked that he remain available in Sicily so the prosecutors can speak to him again.
Investigators also revealed that it’s believed the ship was hit by a downburst – a powerful wind system originating from a thunderstorm that can reach 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour — and not a waterspout, as authorities and some experts had previously thought.
The news conference came a day after the body of the last missing passenger — Hannah Lynch, the 18-year-old daughter of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch — was recovered Friday from the hull of the ship. The body of Mike Lynch, who owned the yacht, was recovered Thursday.
The other victims, according to Italian news agency Adnkronos, are Jonathan Bloomer, the president of Morgan Stanley International; his wife Anne Elizabeth; American lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Nada, all found within the sunken yacht. The body of the yacht’s cook, Recaldo Thomas, was found on Monday morning underwater near the hull but not in it, according to authorities. An official list of the survivors and victims of the tragedy has not been released.
Divers conducted a difficult and dangerous recovery operation for five days in the yacht to locate and retrieve the missing passengers.
Fifteen people who had been onboard the yacht when the downburst struck — believed to be all members of the crew and the captain of the yacht plus five passengers — were rescued alive in the immediate aftermath of the sinking early Monday which occurred around half a mile from the fishing village of Porticello, close to the city of Palermo.