Nine-year-old among five killed in attack on German Christmas market

A nine-year-old child and four adults have been killed, and more than 200 injured after a car drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, officials say.

At least 41 people were critically injured after the incident which lasted around three minutes, police said.

The arrested suspect has been named in local media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi citizen who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had worked as a doctor.

Reiner Haseloff, the premier of Saxony-Anhalt state, said a preliminary investigation suggested the alleged attacker was acting alone.

He added that he could not rule out more deaths due to the number of injured.

The suspect is currently being questioned and prosecutors expect to charge him with murder and attempted murder in due course, the head of the local prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.

Prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens added that the investigation was ongoing but suggested the background to the crime “could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany”.

The suspected attacker has no known links to Islamist extremism – social media and posts online appear to suggest he had been critical of Islam.

Footage from the scene showed numerous emergency services vehicles attending while people lay on the ground.

Further footage then emerged of armed police confronting and arresting a man who can be seen lying on the ground by a stationary vehicle.

Unverified video on social media purports to show a car ploughing into the crowd at the market.

City officials said around 100 police, medics and firefighters, as well as 50 rescue service personnel rushed to the scene.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who travelled to the city on Saturday, described the attack as a “dreadful tragedy” as “so many people were injured and killed with such brutality” in a place that is supposed to be “joyful”.

He told reporters that there were serious concerns for those who had been critically injured – which German media reports is in the dozens – and that “all resources” will be allocated to investigating the suspect behind the attack.

There would be a memorial service for the victims at the Magdeburg Cathedral later on Saturday, he added.

[BBC]

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