Syrian asylum-seeker blows himself up outside German music festival

A Syrian asylum-seeker killed himself and injured 12 other people, three of them seriously, when he detonated a bomb near a music festival in the German town of Ansbach last night.

The attacker had been denied entry to the festival and blew up the rucksack bomb at the nearby Eugen's Weinstube wine bar at 10.10pm local time.

His device contained explosives and metal items used in "wood manufacturing", according to Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann.

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The attacker reportedly entered Germany two years ago. His claim for asylum was rejected last year but he was given leave to stay temporarily because of the civil war in his home country.

"It is terrible that someone abuses the opportunity to find protection here in such a way," Herrmann said. "I am appalled by that. We have to do all we can so that such violence in our country committed by asylum seekers who have come to our country will not spread any further."

He added that the authorities did not know if the man planned to commit suicide or intended to kill other people.

The attacker is reported to have suffered from mental illness and had been "in psychiatric care in the district hospital in Ansbach following a suicide attempt", reports the Daily Telegraph.

More than 2,000 people who had travelled to Ansbach for the music festival were escorted from the area, and the festival was cancelled.

It is the latest in a series of bloody events in Germany over the past week.

Earlier in the day, another Syrian asylum-seeker was arrested after allegedly killing a woman with a machete in the south-west city of Reutlingen, while on Friday, a German-Iranian teenager shot nine people and injured 19 others before committing suicide in Munich.

Police said that neither of the two incidents had the hallmarks of an Islamist terror attack, unlike a separate axe attack on a train travelling between the Bavarian towns of Treuchtlingen and Wurzburg on 18 July. The assailant, an Afghan teenager, was shot dead by police.