BERLIN: A car plowed into a busy outdoor Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, leaving at least two people dead and injuring at least 68 others in what authorities suspect was an attack.
The driver of the car was arrested, German news agency dpa reported, citing unidentified government officials in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. The suspect was not known to German authorities as an Islamic extremist, dpa reported, citing unidentified security officials.
German authorities said they are investigating a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who has lived in Germany for almost two decades in connection with the car-ramming. Police searched his home overnight.
The motive remained unclear and police have not yet named the suspect. He has been named in German media as Taleb A.
Regional government spokesperson Matthias Schuppe and city spokesperson Michael Reif said they suspected it was a deliberate act.
“The pictures are terrible,” Reif 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.
In a foreign ministry statement early on Saturday, Saudi Arabia condemned the incident and expressed solidarity with the German people, and the families of the victims.
The sounds of sirens from first responders clashed with the market’s holiday decorations, including ornaments, stars and leafy garland festooning the vendors’ booths.
Debris could be seen on the ground in footage of a cordoned-off part of the market.
The car drove into the market at around 7 p.m., when it was busy with holiday shoppers looking forward to the weekend.
“This is a terrible event, particularly now in the days before Christmas,” Saxony-Anhalt governor Reiner Haseloff said. Haseloff told dpa that he was on his way to Magdeburg but couldn’t immediately give any information on victims or what was behind the incident.
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. On Dec. 19, 2016, an Islamic extremist plowed through a crowded Christmas with a truck, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
Christmas markets are a huge part of German culture as an annual holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages and successfully exported to much of the Western world. In Berlin alone, more than 100 markets opened late last month and brought the smells of mulled wine, roasted almonds and bratwurst to the capital. Other markets abound across the country.
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.
