More than 50 were injured as a driver tore through a crowded Christmas market in Magdeburg, with the suspect now under arrest.
MAGDEBURG — A car has ploughed into a busy outdoor Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg, killing five people and injuring 50 in what authorities say was a suspected attack.
State governor has said the death toll in the Magdeburg Christmas market attack has risen to 5.
German news agency dpa reported, citing unidentified government officials in the state of Saxony-Anhalt on Friday, that the car driver was arrested. Regional government spokesperson Matthias Schuppe and city spokesperson Michael Reif said they suspected it was deliberate.
Reif stated there were “numerous injured,” though he did not provide an exact number. As reported by AP, emergency services estimated the number of injured to be 50.
“The pictures are terrible,” he said. “My information is that a car drove into the Christmas market visitors, but I can’t yet say from what direction and how far.”
Magdeburg’s University Hospital said it was taking care of 10 to 20 patients but was preparing for more, dpa reported.
The sounds of sirens from first responders clashed with the market’s holiday decorations, including ornaments, stars and leafy garland festooning the vendors’ booths.
Footage from the scene of a cordoned-off part of the market showed debris on the ground.Â
‘Islamophobe, Far-right supporter’
According to the interior minister, German security authorities will investigate the Christmas market incident.
“This is a terrible event, particularly now in the days before Christmas,” Saxony-Anhalt governor Reiner Haseloff said.
Haseloff confirmed that the driver was arrested immediately after the incident. “We have apprehended the perpetrator, he is a doctor from Saudi Arabia who works here in Saxony-Anhalt and has been in Germany since 2006,” he told reporters.
Authorities have not disclosed a potential motive but a preliminary investigation indicates there were no other suspects involved in the attack.
The Welt newspaper said a social media profile matching the suspect, Taleb A., indicated he obtained political asylum in Germany.
His social media accounts contained Islamophobic messages, and support for the far-right AfD party, with outlandish claims that German authorities were “chasing Saudi asylum seekers to destroy their lives” and “Germany wants to Islamise Europe.”
He wrote in June a post about German police using “dirty tactics” against him and other critics of Islam to “destroy their anti-Islam activism.”
German authorities have not released details about the perpetrator’s identity or commented on the reports while investigations were continuing.
Chancellor OIaf Scholz posted on X: “My thoughts are with the victims and their relatives. We stand beside them and beside the people of Magdeburg.”
Magdeburg, which is west of Berlin, is the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt and has about 240,000 residents.
The suspected attack came eight years after an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said late last month that there were no concrete indications of a danger to Christmas markets this year, but that it was wise to be vigilant.
Far-right in Germany goes into damage control mode after car-ramming attack
The suspect in Germany’s deadly car-ramming attack on a Christmas market held strongly anti-Islam views and was angry with Germany’s migrant and asylum policy, officials said, prompting the far-right to go into damage control mode.
Interior Minister Nancy Fraser said on Saturday he held “Islamophobic” views.
Initially, the attack drew comparisons on social media to an immigrant’s deadly attack on a Berlin Christmas market in 2016.
Later, it emerged that the Saudi suspect, a psychiatrist who had lived in Germany for 18 years, had criticised Islam and expressed sympathy for the far right in past social media posts.
This prompted damage control by the far-right.
Martin Sellner, an Austrian popular with Germany’s far-right, posted on social media that the suspect’s motives “seemed to have been complex”, adding that the suspect “hated Islam, but he hated the Germans more”.
‘Sad and shocked’
The leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel, wrote on X: “When will this madness stop?”
“What happened today affects a lot of people. It affects us a lot,” Fael Kelion, a 27-year-old Cameroonian living in the city, told the AFP news agency.
“I think that since (the suspect) is a foreigner, the population will be unhappy, less welcoming.”
Michael Raarig, 67 and an engineer, said: “I am sad, I am shocked. I never would have believed this could happen here in an East German provincial town.”
He added that he believed the attack “will play into the hands of the AfD”, which has had its strongest support in the formerly communist eastern Germany.
The car-ramming attack killed five people and left over 200 injured.
Security was stepped up Saturday at Christmas markets elsewhere in Germany, with more police seen in Hamburg, Leipzig and other cities.
C. TRT World
