Since the truck-ramming attack that struck a Berlin Christmas market, on December 19, 2016, which left 13 people dead and 50 injured, German authorities have always been on high alert in the run-up to the festive season. Despite this, on Friday, December 20, at around 7 pm, a black BMW rammed into a Christmas market, mowing down pedestrians there, near the town hall in the city of Magdeburg, the capital of the state of Saxony-Anhalt with a population of 240,000, located 150 kilometers west of Berlin. The death toll reported on Saturday morning was two people, including one infant, and 68 injured, some of them in a serious condition. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had recently called for vigilance when visiting Christmas markets.
The vehicle’s driver, who has been named in the media as Taleb A., was quickly arrested. “At the current stage of the investigation, it is not yet possible to categorize what happened at the Christmas market,” local police said. The Saxony-Anhalt regional premierChristian Democrat (CDU) Reiner Haseloff, said that the perpetrator of the attack was “from Saudi Arabia, practicing as a doctor” specialized in psychiatry, in a small town located some 50 kilometers from Magdeburg, and indicated that he had “acted alone.” Having been present in Germany since 2006, the man, aged around 50, had reportedly rented a car and driven it – at full speed, for at least 400 meters – through the Christmas market, which had attracted a large number of visitors on the first weekend of the holiday season.
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