The city of Magdeburg in Germany was devastated by a car-ramming attack on its Christmas market, the motives of which remain unclear despite the arrest of the alleged perpetrator.
A car crashed into a group of people at the Christmas market in Magdeburg, northern Germany, on Friday. Between “60 and 80 people” were injured and two people were killed, said a spokesperson for the local emergency services.
According to these services, several of the injured are “seriously” following this act involving “a car“. Some media speak of several deaths.
According to several German media, the horror began at 7:04 p.m. when a car, a dark BMW, raced down the aisles of the Magdeburg Christmas market, hitting many people in its path. According to witnesses on site, the car drove directly into the crowd towards the town hall and people fled in panic. According to a Magdeburg police spokesperson, the car drove into the crowd.for at least 400 meters through the Christmas market“.
The profile of the alleged perpetrator, presented in the German media as Taleb A., arrested on board 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.
On the contrary, his frequent positions on social networks paint the portrait of a man feeling persecuted, having broken with Islam and denouncing on the contrary the “dangers” of an Islamization of Germany. Some media even attribute connections to the German far right. He was, in any case, known in the community of Saudi emigrants in Germany and helped asylum seekers, particularly women. “The motivations remain mysterious, an Islamist background seems excluded“, judges the weekly Der Spiegel.
The Christmas market in Erfurt, further south, was evacuated as a precaution after the events in Magdeburg. Thuringia's Interior Minister Georg Maier explained that this measure was taken at the request of the organizer.
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