Updated 6.50 pm

The van used in yesterday's attack is towed away last night Source: DPA/PA Images

GERMAN AUTHORITIES INVESTIGATING a deadly van ramming attack are focusing on the reported mental health problems of the driver, as the city of Muenster mourned for the two people killed on a sunny afternoon at an open-air restaurant. Rather, he added, “the motive and origins (of the crime) lie within the perpetrator,” a 48-year-old German identified as Jens R. who shot himself dead immediately after the crime. “If Mrs. von Storch has a shred of decency and reason, she should give up her mandate in parliament,” Markus Blume said, according to German media, adding that anyone who exploits the Münster attack in the way that von Storch did has “no business in a parliament in Germany.”

Herbert Reul, interior minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia where Münster is located, told radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk that von Storch’s behavior was “irresponsible,” and said “one-sided hate-mongering” was harmful to the cohesion of society. German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said to NTV channel on Sunday that the ramming in the town of Muenster is not terror-related, adding that there was evidence that the attacker acted alone. After authorities reported that the driver was German and that there was “no indication” of a link to Islamic terror, von Storch tweeted that the man was an “imitator of Islamist terror.”

The general secretary of Angela Merkel’s conservative Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), demanded on Monday that von Storch give up her seat in the Bundestag. Von Storch’s comments also came amid a terror scare on Sunday, when Berlin authorities detained six men suspected of planning an attack on Berlin’s half-marathon event.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer rejects claims that yesterday's car attack was an act of either Islamic or far-right terrorism, saying the attacker was not politically motivated.