At least two people were killed and some 60 injured after a car crashed into a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday.
The driver of the car was arrested immediately at the scene near the local city hall just after 6pm Irish time on Friday evening.
One of those killed was confirmed to be a young child. Fifteen of the injured were seriously hurt according to the city government’s website and officials.
German media reported the driver was a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian national who had rented the car a short time before the attack. Police declined to comment on a possible motive for the attack, nor on reports that he had a rucksack with him in the car. A local government spokesman described the incident as “possibly” a deliberate, terrorist attack.
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“The images are simply terrible,” said government spokesman Michael Reif to local broadcaster MDR.
Eyewitnesses say the driver of the dark BMW car aimed directly at an area of the open-air market popular with families. According to Magdeburg police, the car pushed 400m into the market. The car collided with stands and sent dozens of revellers running for their lives.
Images and videos circulating on social media showed police cars and ambulances at the scene, where visitors appeared to be treating at least half a dozen other injured people immobile on the ground. A woman can be heard saying “we need to help”.
An unverified video circulating on X, claiming to be of the attack, shows a dark vehicle racing into the crowd gathered between market stands and leaving a trail of bodies in its wake.
“It was like a war zone,” said one unnamed eyewitness to the local Mitteldeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
The market was immediately shut down by police and its organiser urged people to leave Magdeburg city centre. State premier Reiner Haseloff rushed to the scene of what he called a “terrible incident”.
On social media, chancellor Olaf Scholz said the “pictures from Magdeburg bode ill, my thoughts are with the victims and their loved ones”.
As rescue crews continued to remove injured people from the scene on Friday evening, hospitals across the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt were readied for a large influx of injured people.
The attack came a day after the anniversary of the Berlin Christmas market attack in 2016. Some 13 were killed and 70 people injured when an Islamist extremist drove an articulated lorry into a market in the western city centre. Since that attack, the market has been protected from traffic by heavy concrete barriers. The driver of the Berlin lorry fled to Italy where he was later shot dead by local police.
On Friday evening, security analysts in Berlin were quick to ask whether the lessons of Berlin attack had been learned in Magdeburg. Security analyst Malte Roschinski said the videos showed a vehicle moving at high speed into the crowd “with no hindrance, gathering momentum as it moved”.
“Clearly there was not enough preparation from the organiser to think this through and block off certain axes,” he added, “so that, even if a car breaks through, that it couldn’t get 400m deep but just 50m.”
Christmas market operators across Germany had been alerted by federal authorities of a heightened terrorist danger after warnings issued online by Islamist extremist groups.
Hospitals across the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt were put on alert to receive large numbers of injured. German police union chief Rainer Wendt urged locals to stay away from the market.
“It’s important to let police do their work,” said Mr Wendt. “They are not just trying to save lives but also other measures that are time-consuming.”
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