Hesse, Gründau: An ATM was blown up in the Rothenbergen district in September 2022. (archive image)
Image: dpa
According to one report, 450 ATMs have already been blown up this year. While the perpetrators used to rely on gas, they are now increasingly using explosives. This increases the risk to people in the crime scene environment.
Rand 450 ATMs in Germany have been blown up so far this year, according to one report. This was a high for this crime, as the newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported. The newspaper referred to participants in the conference of interior ministers (IMK), which took place in Munich until Friday.
In previous years, fewer machines were blown up: 414 in 2020 and 381 in 2021. According to the report, Lower Saxony’s Interior Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) spoke of 500 “completed and attempted crimes” nationwide in 2022.
Although the number of ATMs that have been blown up in Germany continues to rise, the interior ministers refrained from binding guidelines for protecting money for the banks at their meeting. First of all, we continue to rely on voluntary actions.
Metal parts in the children’s room wall
The crimes are now increasingly being committed with explosives, reported the world on Sunday, citing the IMK. This is a new and worrying development: criminals used to use gas mixtures for attacks. Oliver Huth, state chairman of the Association of German Criminal Investigators (BDK) in North Rhine-Westphalia, told the newspaper that people in the vicinity of the crime scene were in acute danger: “Pedestrians were already injured, metal parts smashed into children’s rooms and houses were no longer habitable.”
According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, the current development in Germany is being accelerated by a displacement effect from the Netherlands. Extensive preventive measures against such explosions have already been implemented there. Almost two thirds of the suspects registered by the BKA in 2020 and 2021 come from the Netherlands.
