Three people have been detained after a small van carrying several passengers ploughed into a group of people on a footpath in the German city of Munich on Wednesday, in what police say is the latest installment in a gang war.
A police spokesperson said early Thursday that "the nature of the involvement in the crime" was now being investigated.
The police did not give details about the identity of the three suspects or how they were connected to the incident.
Preliminary investigations showed a pre-existing relationship between the perpetrators and the injured, indicating a connection with so-called rocker or motorcycle gangs, the spokesperson said.
After the van ploughed into the group on the footpath, six people got out and attacked the group they had driven into with weapons including knives.
A policeman with a machine pistol at the scene. Photo: Matthias Balk/dpa
Three men injured
Three men aged between 42 and 56 were injured, either from the impact or in the subsequent brawl. None of them are in a life-threatening condition, police said.
The assailants managed to escape as police cordoned off the area and conducted a search with the help of a police helicopter.
They said there was no indication of further danger to the public.
"What we are dealing with is clearly an extremely brutal altercation between two rocker gangs that are known to police," Joachim Hermann, interior minister of the state of Bavaria, told broadcaster Antenne Bayern on Wednesday evening.
"It is unacceptable that gang wars are carried out in the streets of Munich," Hermann said.
"The fact that the first of the suspects have been detained is a great success for our police," he said, before the number of detainees had been confirmed by police.
