At Least 5 Dead, More Than 200 Injured In German Christmas Market Attack | EUROtoday

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned each the victims and their shaken sense of safety after a Saudi physician deliberately drove right into a Christmas market teeming with vacation buyers, killing no less than 5 folks, together with a small youngster, and injuring no less than 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man on the website of the assault in Magdeburg on Friday night and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany for almost 20 years, training medication in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officers mentioned.

The governor of the encircling state of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, informed reporters that the dying toll rose from two to 5 and that greater than 200 folks in whole had been injured.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz mentioned that almost 40 of them “are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

Several German media shops recognized the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his final title according to privateness legal guidelines, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and positioned flowers exterior a church close to the market on the chilly and gloomy day. Several folks stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a earlier Christmas market assault in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God’s mercy, providing their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

There had been nonetheless no solutions Saturday as to what prompted him to drive right into a crowd within the jap German metropolis of Magdeburg.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets every day specializing in anti-Islam themes, criticizing the faith and congratulating Muslims who left the religion.

He additionally accused German authorities of failing to do sufficient to fight what he mentioned was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an activist who helped Saudi ladies flee their homeland. He has additionally voiced assist for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) social gathering.

Recently, he appeared targeted on his principle that German authorities have been concentrating on Saudi asylum seekers.

Prominent German terrorism skilled Peter Neumann mentioned he had but to come back throughout a suspect in an act of mass violence with that profile.

“After 25 years in this ‘business’ you think nothing could surprise you anymore. But a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in East Germany, loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists — that really wasn’t on my radar, ” Neumann, the director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College London, wrote on X.

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

The violence shocked Germany and the town, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive occasion that’s a part of a centuries-old German custom. It prompted a number of different German cities to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin saved its markets open however has elevated its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist assaults in recent times, together with a knife assault that killed three folks and wounded eight at a competition within the western metropolis of Solingen in August.

Magdeburg is a metropolis of about 240,000 folks, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s assault got here eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck right into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 folks and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to happen within the metropolis cathedral within the night. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings throughout the nation.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German information company dpa confirmed the suspect’s arrest at a tram cease in the course of the street. A close-by police officer pointing a handgun on the man shouted at him as he lay susceptible, his head arched up barely. Other officers swarmed across the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is situated in a mall throughout from the Christmas market, was on the telephone throughout a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they had been fireworks. She then noticed a automobile drive by way of the market at excessive velocity. People screamed and a baby was thrown into the air by the automobile.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the automobile bursting out of the market and turning proper onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee road after which coming to a standstill on the tram cease the place the suspect was arrested.

The variety of injured folks was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold,” she mentioned.

The market itself was nonetheless cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans each 50 meters (about 54 yards). Police with machine pistols guarded each entry to the market.

Some thermal safety blankets nonetheless lay on the road.

Christmas markets are a German vacation custom cherished for the reason that Middle Ages, now efficiently exported to a lot of the Western world.

Saudi Arabia’s international ministry condemned the assault on X.

Aboubakr reported from Cairo and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.