The alleged perpetrator of Friday evening’s Christmas market attack in Magdeburg that killed at least five people is reportedly an Islam critic and sympathiser of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party.
Police identified the driver, overpowered at the scene, as Taleb A, a 50-year-old doctor and Saudi national who has lived in Germany since 2006, and lived and worked at a hospital in nearby Bernburg.
German media have published social media posts in which he reportedly accused former chancellor Angela Merkel, with her liberal approach to immigration, of “destroying Europe”.
On Saturday, chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the scene of the attack, 140km southwest of Berlin, that left 205 people injured, including more than 80 seriously. A nine-year-old was among the five people killed, an official said. City official Ronni Krug said he did not have further information on the adults who were killed.
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The attack took place shortly after 6pm Irish time on Friday evening when a rented black BMW raced into the market, knocking over dozens of people and demolishing decorations.
Special forces stormed the suspect’s apartment at 3am on Saturday morning while investigators questioned the man, who is believed to have anti-Islam sympathies.
Taleb A claimed he had been threatened with “slaughter” by Islamists if he returned to his homeland.
“That’s why I decided to apply for asylum in Germany, there was no point taking the risk of having to return and being killed,” he allegedly posted, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine daily. “I am the most aggressive killer of Islam in history.”
In a X profile, reportedly with posts from the man, he praised the Islam-critical policies of the far-right AfD and floated the idea of helping the party set up an academy for ex-Muslims.
Days before the attack, according to Der Spiegel, he posted a video on an Islam-critical US website, claiming: “Germany is hunting Saudi asylum seekers inside and outside Germany to destroy their lives ... Germany wants to Islamise Europe.”
The AfD has announced plans to hold a demonstration on Sunday in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, where the party is the second most popular party with 30 per cent support.
State premier Reiner Haseloff, from the centre-right Christian Democratic Union, described the attack as “a terrible tragedy, a catastrophe for Magdeburg and the state”.
“This is one of the worst things you can imagine,” he told journalists on Friday evening, adding that “every victim in connection with this tragedy is one too many”.
Mr Scholz wrote on social media that “the images from Magdeburg bode ill, my thoughts are with the victims and their loved ones”.
Eyewitnesses described the scene of the attack as a “war zone”, with demolished sheds and debris scattered across the marketplace outside Magdeburg city hall.
An unverified video circulating on Twitter/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.
The Bild tabloid spoke to an eye witness it identified as Nadine, whose boyfriend was ripped from her side as the car raced towards them and injured on his head and leg, and taken to hospital. She been unable to track him down since, telling Bild: “The uncertainty is unbearable.”
The attack came a day after the anniversary of the Berlin Christmas market attack in 2016, when an Islamist extremist crashed a lorry into a market, killing 13. Since then all Berlin markets have been protected from traffic by heavy concrete barriers.
Ahead of this Christmas season, German security services warned of multiple threats by Islamist extremist groups on market gatherings and urged organisers to reinforce their perimeters. – Additional reporting AP
