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.
The alleged perpetrator is a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia, practicing in the Saxony-Anhalt region, of which Magdeburg, 160 kilometers from Berlin, is the regional capital.
This man “acted alone”, indicated the head of the regional government, Reiner Haseloff.
The car drove into the crowd “for at least 400 meters through the Christmas market”, a Magdeburg police spokesperson told AFP.
The attacker was at the wheel of a black SUV which rammed security barriers, then zigzagged around the market grounds, according to testimonies from visitors on the local news site Volksstimme.
While trying to turn around, he was stopped by police officers, according to the same source.
Nadine, 32, was with her friend Marco in the market during the attack. “He was hit and carried away, it was horrible, he didn’t even scream,” she told the daily Bild.
German head of state Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke of an attack in a press release. “The joy of a peaceful Christmas to come has been brutally interrupted,” he responded.
According to a provisional report from the municipality, the tragedy left two dead and 68 injured. Among them, there are 15 people “seriously injured”, the others having suffered injuries of severity described as “medium” or “light”.
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.
The political class is in shock. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the current events “foreshadowed the worst”.
Far-right leaders 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.
The French president and the heads of government of Italy Giorgia Meloni and Spain's Perdo Sanchez said they were “shocked” by the attack.
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.
The same month, 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.
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 well as many countries in the world.
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