Vehicle hits Christmas market in Germany: 60 to 80 injured

Between “60 and 80 people” were injured when a car crashed into a Christmas market on Friday in the German city of Magdeburg, a spokesperson for the local emergency services told AFP.

According to these services, several of the injured were “seriously” following this act involving “a car”. Some media speak of several deaths and suggest an attack, but the authorities did not immediately confirm.

According to the Bild newspaper, more than 20 people were injured while witnesses reported several deaths, according to the regional media Volksstimme.

The authorities did not immediately provide an exact toll.

The police of this city of around 250,000 inhabitants, capital of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, speak of a “major intervention” underway on the Christmas market, according to a message on X.

NTV broadcaster showed numerous ambulances and fire trucks at the site, injured people being rushed to hospitals and rescuers installing aid devices for the victims.

The Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, recently called on the population to be vigilant at Christmas markets, without mentioning specific threats.

Christmas markets are an “ideologically appropriate target for people motivated by Islamism,” intelligence services recently warned.

Germany experienced a bloody truck-ramming attack on a Christmas market in December 2016, claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group, which left 12 dead in the center of Berlin.

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 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 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.