At least 28 people were injured when a car drove into a crowd in Munich on Thursday, police said, as the southern German city prepares for a top-level security conference due to be attended by US Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Police said on social platform X that the driver was “secured” at the scene and no longer poses any danger.

The suspect is believed to be a 24-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker, police said.

“It is suspected to be an attack — a lot points to that," Bavarian governor Markus Söder told reporters at the scene.

The suspect must be punished to the full extent of the law and then expelled from Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Thursday.

"What has happened is awful," Scholz told reporters. "From my point of view it is quite clear, this attacker cannot count on any mercy, he must be punished and he must leave the country."

A passer-by said he witnessed the incident from a window of a neighbouring office building. The car, a Mini Cooper, had threaded its way between the police vehicles and then accelerated, he said.

Another witness said she had seen part of the incident from a building. The car had accelerated and hit several people in the crowd, she said.

Regional public broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) reported that the people who were hurt were apparently participating in a strike.

"One person is lying on the street and a young man has been taken away by the police. People are sitting on the ground, crying and trembling," a reporter for BR wrote in a post on X.

A large-scale police operation was underway near the southern city's central train station.

The Munich Security Conference is to start on Friday and Vance and Zelensky are arriving later on Thursday.

The incident occurred around 1.5 kilometres (1 mile) from the security conference venue.

Security has been in sharp focus in Germany ahead of a federal election next week and following a string of violent attacks.

The incident follows a series of attacks involving immigrants in recent months that have pushed migration to the forefront on the campaign trail ahead of Germany's February 23 election. Most recently, a two-year-old boy and another person were killed in a knife attack in Aschaffenburg, also in Bavaria.