Ansbach on edge after music festival suicide attack

Many people living in the Bavarian town of Ansbach feel on edge after Sunday’s (July 24) suicide bombing. It was Germany’s fourth violent attack in less than a week.

The Syrian bomber had been facing deportation to Bulgaria.

“Yesterday we were saying Ansbach is so small, how could something happen here?,” said Local resident Ysabella Fischer. “There’s nothing going on here. So now when it comes to really big festivals – next weekend I wanted to go to Bardentreffen in Nuremberg and now I don’t think I will, because somehow… yesterday was bad.”

“I get a bit worked up when I see all the media fuss going on – that’s how people like this get so much attention, which irritates me,” said Erika Mueller. “Of course I am affected but we know that it could happen anywhere. It is how it is and I’ll keep living my life as normal.”

“It’s a real shame, when people go out with their families and then this happens,” said Erich Kozany. “Of course nobody expected anything like this to happen in Ansbach, but you see the young people today… it’s catastrophic.”

German interior ministry spokesman Tobias Plate told a government news conference on Monday: “Syrians cannot at the moment be deported to Syria at the moment, but that doesn’t mean that Syrians overall cannot be deported.”