At least two people were killed, more than 60 injured, including around fifteen seriously, by a man arrested whose profile is intriguing.
Witnesses still horrified. Friday, December 20, a vehicle drove into the crowd gathered at the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, killing at least two people and injuring around sixty people, 15 of them seriously. The car drove into the crowd “for at least 400 meters through the Christmas market”, said a spokesperson for the Magdeburg police.
During the hours that followed the events, the testimonies, each as chilling as the last, followed one another. On BFMTV, Wolfgang, a town hall employee who worked all day on a market information stand, expressed his sorrow.
“How can I tell you, I'm traumatized. These people went to the Christmas market and they left in tears, children were in tears, it's terrible. We are sad, we are extremely bereaved, horrified by this act” , he said.
And the latter added: “two minutes before, we heard Christmas carols again, and then suddenly silence. The children were crying and saying that there was a car that drove into the crowd,” continues -he.
“The world is sick”
Other testimonies illustrate the violence with which the events unfolded. A 32-year-old victim, Nadine, was arm in arm with her boyfriend Marco, 39, when the car hit him.
“He was dragged and taken from me, it was terrible,” she said. “No one shouted, we didn’t hear the car,” she told the Bild newspaper.
She said her companion had been injured in the leg and head and that she did not know to which hospital he had been transported, describing an “unbearable uncertainty”.
“We saw the roof of the car, then it happened. Everyone was lying on the ground, children, men, injured, it's unimaginable,” a witness told the Welt television channel TV.
“It's terrible, there was a dead body next to me all this time. I thought I was just going to the Christmas market and such a thing happens. The world is sick,” added his partner.
One of the two fatally injured victims was a young child. More than 60 people were injured.
Profile that intrigues
The suspect was arrested and taken into custodyaccording to German police. According to information from Welt et Bildhe is a man aged around fifty and originally from Saudi Arabia.
The profile of the alleged perpetrator, presented in the German media as Taleb A., arrested aboard the ram car, is intriguing.
Living in Germany since 2006, a doctor practicing in the town of Bernburg, near Magdeburg and with refugee status, he was not at all known for his sympathies with the jihadist movement.
