Name: At Least 5 Dead, 200 Injured After Car Plows Into German Christmas Market
Uploaded: 2024-12-21T14:48:16.000Z
Description: MAGDEBURG, Germany—A car plowed into a busy outdoor Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, killing at least five people and injuring at least 200 others in what authorities suspect was an attack.

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MAGDEBURG, Germany—A car plowed into a busy outdoor Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, killing at least five people and injuring at least 200 others in what authorities suspect was an attack.

The driver was arrested shortly after the car barreled into the market at around 7 p.m., when it was teeming with holiday shoppers looking forward to the weekend. The suspect is a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who first came to Germany in 2006, said Tamara Zieschang, the interior minister for the state of Saxony-Anhalt, at a news conference.

“As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city," Saxony-Anhalt's governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters.

Fifteen of those hurt were seriously injured, according to government officials and the city government’s website.

Haseloff said the two people confirmed to have died were an adult and a toddler, but that he couldn’t rule out further deaths.

“Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many,” he said.

The suspected attack in Magdeburg, a city of about 240,000 people to the west of Berlin that is the capital of the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, comes eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. That attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Christmas markets are a huge part of German culture as an annual holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages and successfully exported to much of the Western world. In Berlin alone, more than 100 markets opened late last month, bringing the smells of mulled wine, roasted almonds, and bratwurst to the capital. Other markets abound in towns and cities across the country.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said late last month that there were no concrete indications of a danger to Christmas markets this year, but that it was wise to be vigilant.

Migration has been a major source of tension in German politics since large numbers of refugees and other migrants began arriving in 2015. The government has been under pressure to reduce irregular immigration and has taken measures that include the imposition of border checks.

Hours after Friday's suspected attack, the sound of sirens clashed with the market’s festive ornaments, lights, and leafy garlands.

The attack reverberated beyond Magdeburg. After a soccer match on Friday evening between Bayern Munich and Leipzig, Bayern CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen asked fans at the club’s stadium to observe a minute of silence.

Magdeburg resident Dorin Steffen told German news agency dpa that she was at a concert in a nearby church when she heard the sirens. The cacophony was so loud “you had to assume that something terrible had happened.”

She said the attack was “a dark day” for the city.

“We are shaking,” Steffen said. “Full of sympathy for the relatives, also in the hope that nothing has happened to our relatives, friends, and acquaintances.”

Haseloff called it a catastrophe for the city, state, and country.

"It is really one of the worst things one can imagine, particularly in connection with what a Christmas market should bring," the governor said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz shared his condolences to the victims in a <a href="https://x.com/Bundeskanzler/status/1870198262944158186">post</a> on the X social media platform: “My thoughts are with the victims and their relatives. We stand beside them and beside the people of Magdeburg.”

<em>By Ebrahim Noroozi, Chris Stern, and Geir Moulson</em>

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