Munich shooting: Recent attacks on Western targets

Nine people died on Friday when an 18-year-old German-Iranian gunman went on a killing spree in the southern German city of Munich.

The attack sparked fears of a new jihadist attack on the West, but police later described it as “classic act by a deranged person” obsessed with massacres who had no link to the Islamic State group.

Following are recent mass attacks in Europe and the United States, and on other Western targets:

– July 18, 2016: GERMANY –

A 17-year-old assailant, believed to have been an Afghan or Pakistan refugee, attacks passengers on a Bavarian train with an axe, injuring five people, two of them critically. He is shot dead by police.

The Islamic State (IS) group releases a video the following day purportedly featuring the attacker announcing he would carry out an “operation” in Germany, and presenting himself as a “soldier of the caliphate”.

– July 14, 2016: FRANCE –

Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31, rams a 19-tonne truck into a holiday crowd in Nice, killing 84 people.

IS describes him as one of their “soldiers” who staged the attack “in response to calls to target nations of coalition states” fighting the jihadist group.

– June 28, 2016: TURKEY –

A triple suicide attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport kills 47 people. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim says “the evidence points to Daesh,” an Arabic acronym for IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

– June 13, 2016: FRANCE –

A man armed with a knife who claims allegiance to IS kills a senior police officer and his companion at their home in Magnanville, west of Paris.

– June 12, 2016: UNITED STATES –

A gunman who claims allegiance to IS opens fire inside a gay bar in Orlando, Florida and kills 49 people in the deadliest mass shooting in US history. IS later says the man was a fighter for their Islamic caliphate.

– March 22, 2016: BELGIUM –

Suicide attacks claimed by IS kill 32 people and wound more than 300 at Brussels airport and Maelbeek metro station, near European Union offices. They appear to have been carried out by members of the same cell that committed attacks in Paris in November 2015.

– January 12, 2016: TURKEY –

Twelve German tourists are killed in a suicide attack in central Istanbul. On March 19, three Israeli tourists and an Iranian are killed by a suicide bomber at an Istanbul shopping centre. Turkish authorities attribute both attacks to IS.

– December 2, 2015: UNITED STATES –

Pakistani national Tashfeen Malik, 29, and his wife Syed Farook, a 28-year-old US citizen, open fire during a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people. IS hails the attack, but does not claim direct responsibility.

– November 13, 2015: FRANCE –

Coordinated suicide attacks in Paris kill 130 people and wound more than 350 at a concert hall, cafes and the national stadium. IS claims responsibility for the attacks.

– October 31, 2015: EGYPT –

An Airbus jetliner owned by a Russian company crashes with 224 people on board in the Sinai desert after a bomb rips a hole in the plane. IS claims responsibility.

– June 26, 2015: TUNISIA –

Gunmen kill 38 people, including 30 British tourists, at a beach hotel in Sousse, a little more than three months after a similar attack at the Bardo museum in Tunis kills 22 people, including 21 foreign tourists. IS claims both attacks.

– July 16, 2015: UNITED STATES –

An attack on a Chattanooga, Tennessee recruitment centre and a Navy and Marine Corps reserve centre leaves four marines and one sailor dead at the hands of a lone gunman, who according to the FBI was inspired by radical Islamist propaganda.

– June 17, 2015: UNITED STATES –

Man guns down nine African-American churchgoers in South Carolina during an evening Bible study class at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The killer, 21-year-old Dylann Roof has been indicted on charges of murder and hate crime.

– January 8, 2015: FRANCE –

A gunman who claims allegiance to IS kills a policewoman in a Paris suburb before attacking a Jewish supermarket the next day, where he kills four more people.

– July 22, 2011: NORWAY –

White supremacist Anders Breivik kills eight people in a bombing outside a government building in Oslo and then guns down another 69, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Youth camp on the island of Utoya.

Source: Vanguard Nigeria