Of
Irene Soave
The testimonies about the Magdeburg attack which took place on Friday evening, and the shock among the stalls. A restaurateur: «We are in war conditions». A girl: «My partner was taken away from me, I don't know which hospital he is in»
“We are in war conditions”a restaurateur tells a journalist, completely shocked: at the market Magdeburg it had two stalls, and the first, the hamburger one, was “completely destroyed” by the attacker. “We are at war”. The voices on social media, full of hatred towards the outgoing government and towards those who are not German, seem to agree with him.
Dal Magdeburg Christmas market – where on Friday evening an attacker ran over the crowd with a car – some videos immediately leak out: two minutes of police cars coming and going, of nervous policemen clearing away and shouting «Away from the city center, away from the city center, orderly”, of sirens blaring; a few seconds from above, recorded by a security camera and not suitable for weak stomachs, in which the black BMW hurtles like a bullet over people who then struggle to get up, or stagger and then fall, or don't get up at all. An image that captures just part of the assault: «He went in a zigzag, to catch as many people as possible»is in fact the version reported by “several witnesses” in the local newspaper Volksstimme. An alleged video of the arrest, recorded from a window. And the most disturbing images, taken by an eyewitness who does not speak, only captures the scene: people on the ground, desperate crying, rudimentary help.
A woman named Nadine, 32 years oldtells the Bild reporter that she can no longer find her partner, Marco, 39 years old: they had purposely gone to Magdeburg from Wolfsburg, where they live, because the Christmas market there is the most beautiful. They were hugging when the car arrived: «He was taken away, he was ripped from my arms. It was terrible. Nobody even shouted. We didn't even have time to hear the car coming.” Marco, injured in the leg and head, was taken to hospital. “But we don't know which one, and the uncertainty is unbearable.”
«Children will also have died»: a woman says she saw the black BMW of death speed by, right in the area of the market where there were more children, the «Maerchen-bereich», the area dedicated to fairytale characters which is a great classic of the biggest Christmas markets, and which children generally love. According to this witness, the attacker actually aimed at her; there were many families, and she herself with her child by the hand says she only managed to throw herself to the side, and it went well. “The images are terrible,” the spokesperson for the city of Magdeburg tells the press. Few others speak.
On social media, like X, however, we move forward at three thousand posts per minute. The far-right AfD had already recorded a victory shortly before with the “endorsement” of Elon Musk; in the comments on the attack, full of hatred for the “traffic light” government, he dominates. The Austrian nationalist leader Martin Sellner makes a video from a few days ago go viral, in which an elderly woman, at the Christmas market in her city, sees a switchblade with which she was cleaning vegetables confiscated: is this, Sellner asks, the police what protects us?
A hoax is circulating: dozens and dozens of accounts are retweeting each other, “according to sources close to the Magdeburg police, the attacker is a Syrian refugee who has no longer had the right to asylum in Germany since 2019, and should have been expelled.” It's not true: the attacker is a doctor from the same polyclinic whose spokesperson, yesterday, announced “we are prepared, the entire intensive care unit is on alert”.
December 21, 2024 (changed December 21, 2024 | 07:06)
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