Car ram attack in Germany | Two dead and more than 60 injured, one suspect arrested

(Magdeburg) A car drove into a crowd at a Christmas market on Friday evening in the German city of Magdeburg, killing two people and injuring more than 60, in a suspected attack in which the suspect of Saudi origin was arrested.

The attack comes eight years after a similar act committed at a Christmas market in Berlin, while Germany, in the middle of an electoral campaign, is on alert against the risk of attacks.

For the head of government of the Magdeburg region, Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, this is in no way a coincidence, but a “temporal synchronization” desired for “political” reasons.

The alleged perpetrator is a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia who arrived in Germany in 2006. He practiced in the region of Saxony-Anhalt, of which Magdeburg, 160 kilometers from Berlin, is the regional capital. This man “acted alone”, according to Reiner Haseloff.

His motives remain unclear, as he was not known to the police as an Islamist and, according to German media, had even published opinions on social media denouncing the dangers of Islamization.

The car drove into the crowd “for at least 400 meters through the Christmas market,” said a Magdeburg police spokesperson.

The two deaths are a child and an adult. According to a provisional report from the municipality, 68 people were injured, including 15 people seriously.

The assailant was driving a black SUV which rammed security barriers, then zigzagged around the market grounds, according to visitor testimonies on the local news site People's voice.

Nadine, 32, was with her friend Marco in the market during the attack. “He was hit and taken away, it was horrible, he didn’t even scream,” she told the daily Bild.

Saudi Arabia “condemned” the attack and expressed “its solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims” as well as its “rejection of violence”.

“The worst”

According to AFP journalists in Magdeburg, numerous ambulances and fire trucks are on the site in a constant coming and going of emergency vehicles transporting injured people.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz plans to visit the site on Saturday. In the meantime, the far right reacted quickly, in Germany and abroad, where the debate is lively on security and the reception of immigrants.

“When will this madness end? », Wrote on the X network the co-president of the AfD Alice Weidel, whose party is credited with second place in the legislative elections which will be held on February 23.

“The target of the attack owes nothing to chance: radical Islam is waging a war on our Christian traditions, on our identities, on our civilization,” reacted the president of the National Rally Jordan Bardella in France.

Christmas markets are an “ideologically appropriate target for people motivated by Islamism”, German intelligence services warned before the festive period.

Previous from Berlin

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 attacks or planned attacks with Islamist motivation, and involving foreign nationals, have shaken the country in recent months.

At the end of August, a knife attack committed by a Syrian and claimed by IS left three people dead and several injured during a party in Solingen (west).

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 early September, German police shot dead a young Austrian known for his links to radical Islam as he prepared to carry out an attack on the Israeli consulate general in Munich.

Since the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, German authorities have increased their vigilance in the face of the Islamist threat and the resurgence of anti-Semitism, as many countries around the world.