Ansbach bomber may have detonated inadvertently

Bavaria’s top security official says it’s unclear whether the man who blew himself up at a bar in the town of Ansbach meant to detonate it at the moment he did.

State Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, who also says the assailant was in an online chat with a still-unidentified person immediately before the explosion, says Wednesday that further investigation is needed.

Herrmann says: “Because of witness testimony on what happened and also the course of the chat, there are indeed questions about whether he intended to set off the bomb at that moment.”

Attacker Mohammad Daleel, a Syrian asylum-seeker, died and 15 people were wounded when the bomb exploded in a wine bar Sunday night after he wasn’t allowed entry to a nearby open-air concert because he didn’t have a ticket.

“There was apparently an immediate contact with someone who had a significant influence on this attack,” says Hermann.

He says it wasn’t clear whether the assailant was in contact with the Islamic State group or where the other person in the chat was.

Herrmann says investigators checking the assailant’s cellphone came across the “intensive chat” and that “the chat appears to end immediately before the attack.”

— AP