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BERLIN (Reuters) – A car with slogans scrawled on the sides crashed into the door of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office in Berlin on Wednesday, and police arrested the driver, a Reuters witness said.
Reuters footage from the scene showed police inspecting the family car at the door with the words “Stop globalization policy” written in white on the right side and “Damn murderers of children and the elderly” on the other.
“The chancellor, other members of the government and the people who work in the chancery were not in danger at any time,” said government spokesman Steffen Seibert, adding that the incident had caused only minor damage.
It was unclear if Merkel was inside the building, a white postmodern structure located in a square of the Reichstag building that houses Germany’s parliament and well off the main roads. Dozens of police officers and a fire truck attended the incident.
The driver, who appeared to be in his middle age, was taken in a wheelchair by police.
“We are establishing whether the driver deliberately drove against (the door),” Berlin police said on Twitter. “He has been arrested.”
A firefighter later moved the car, which had a northwestern Lippe County license plate, away from the door. Both the fence and the car looked practically intact.
Berlin is home to an active left-wing anti-globalization scene, whose members have tried to stop the development projects of big global companies and occupy empty houses.
Merkel was scheduled to hold a video conference of the prime ministers of German states on Wednesday, 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 drove it into a crowded Berlin Christmas market, killing 11 more people and injuring dozens more.
(Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold and Andreas Rinke; written by Thomas Escritt; edited by Thomas Seythal, Emma Thomasson, and Philippa Fletcher)
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