A car hit a group of people at the Christmas market in Magdeburg, northern Germany, this Friday evening, December 20, causing numerous victims. The driver was arrested by the police.
An attack took place this Friday, December 20 in the evening on the Christmas market in Magdeburg, in the north of Germany. A black SUV drove into the crowd in the middle of the chalets. At least two people, including a young child, were killed, according to the latest official report, and 68 were injured. Among them are 15 people “seriously injured”the others having suffered serious injuries qualified as “average” or “light”. According to local newspaper information People's voiceconfirmed by Bildthe number of deaths could rise to eleven people. The driver of the vehicle was arrested.
Quoted by Bildthe spokesperson for the Saxony-Anhalt government, Matthias Schuppe, speaks of an attack. Questioned by the regional radio Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, the spokesperson for the city of Magdeburg, Michael Reiff, also speaks of“an attack on the Christmas market”. “There are many injuredhe said again. The images are terrible. A Magdeburg police spokesperson says the vehicle drove into the crowd for 400 meters.
According to initial testimonies reported by People's voicethe driver of a black SUV forced security checks shortly after 7 p.m. and plowed his vehicle into the Christmas market. He would have zigzagged through the aisles, apparently to hit as many visitors as possible. He was reportedly stopped by police officers as he attempted to turn around.
The author is a man of Saudi origin
According to Welt, who cites security sources, it is a man from Saudi Arabia born in 1974. He would have rented the vehicle with which he drove into the crowd. According to information from Bildhe worked as a doctor at the Magdeburg clinic. He was not known for Islamist radicalization by the security services.
A large number of rescuers and firefighters were deployed. Police sealed off a large part of the city center of the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt. Pedestrians are asked to leave the city via megaphone announcements.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his shock in a message published on X. “The information coming from Magdeburg suggests the worst. My thoughts are with the victims and their loved ones. We stand with them and with the people of Magdeburg. I thank the rescue teams involved in these hours of anguish”he wrote. The Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff (CDU), reacted to the events at the Magdeburg Christmas market. “It’s a terrible event, especially now, a few days before Christmas”Haseloff said.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser recently called on the population to be vigilant at Christmas markets, without mentioning any specific threats. Christmas markets are a “ideologically appropriate target for people motivated by Islamism”had recently warned the intelligence services.
A series of attacks in recent months
Germany experienced a bloody ram truck attack on a Christmas market in December 2016, claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group, which left 12 dead in the center of Berlin and more than 60 injured.
Several Islamist-motivated attacks or planned attacks, involving foreign nationals, have shocked the country in recent months. At the end of August, a knife attack committed by a Syrian and claimed by IS left three dead and several injured during a party in Solingen, in the west of the country. In June, another knife attack, attributed to an Afghan during an anti-Islam rally in Mannheim, left one dead, a police officer who had intervened.
In September, a 27-year-old Syrian man suspected of links to radical Islam was arrested for planning a machete attack targeting German soldiers in a Bavarian town. And recently, three young suspected jihadists suspected of preparing an attack were arrested in southwest Germany, the federal prosecutor's office and the police announced on Tuesday.
