A car crashed into the door of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office in Berlin on Wednesday, a Reuters witness said.
Berlin police detained the driver of a car that crashed into the door of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office, police said via Twitter.
Local and federal police are investigating whether the driver intentionally knocked on the door, police added.
Berlin police do not suspect an extremist attack after a car crashed into the door of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office, a spokeswoman told Reuters on Wednesday.
“We are not working on the basis of this assumption at this time,” he said, when asked if the police suspected an extremist attack.
Reuters footage from the scene showed police inspecting a station wagon at the door with the words “Stop the politics of globalization” scrawled in white on the right side.
The images on social media showed the words “Damn murderers of children and the elderly” written on the other.
There were no immediate reports of casualties. Dozens of police officers and a fire truck were at the scene.
Merkel was scheduled to host a video conference of German prime ministers of state on Wednesday morning, in which an extension of the coronavirus lockdown and other steps to combat the pandemic will be discussed.
Europe is on high alert after suspected Islamist militants killed eight people in Paris, Nice and Vienna in recent weeks. On Tuesday, Swiss police identified a Swiss woman who stabbed a victim in the neck and grabbed another by the neck at a Lugano department store as a known jihadist.
Four years ago, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker with Islamist ties hijacked a truck and then dumped it into a crowded Berlin Christmas market, killing 11 more and injuring dozens more.
The chancellery office, a white postmodern structure located across from a plaza in the Reichstag building that houses Germany’s parliament, is well off the main roads.
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