A CAR ploughed into a trade union demonstration in Munich today, seriously hurting 28 people including a child.

The car’s driver overtook a police car following the demo by the Ver.di public service union, and then drove into the rear of the demonstration, running over trade unionists marching as part of a one-day strike by childcare workers demanding better wages.

The driver, who has been arrested, was an Afghan asylum-seeker, police said — further inflaming an election campaign in which most parties have demanded crackdowns on immigrants. While police believe the attack was deliberate, the motive is not yet known. 

The coalition organising protests against the Munich Security Conference which opens in Munich on Friday said it was “appalled and shocked by the act. We sincerely hope that no one will succumb to their injuries.”

It expressed solidarity with the Ver.di union, and said it would refrain from speculation until the police investigation made things clearer.

But far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel, who had just returned from a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest — Mr Orban hailed the AfD as “the future of Germany” — immediately tied the attack to immigration policy, demanding a “migration turnaround now!”

The AfD places second in most opinion polls. Enormous protests against it in many German cities have not affected its polling but serve as a warning to politicians of traditional parties not to violate a longstanding taboo on striking coalition deals with the party, something some suspect frontrunner Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democrats wishes to do, after he won a parliamentary vote on immigration policy with the AfD’s support.