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A car ploughed into a crowd of people at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg on Friday evening, killing at least two and injuring dozens more in what local officials said they believed was a deliberate attack.
The prime minister of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, said police had detained a man originally from Saudi Arabia in connection with the incident, which he said had claimed two lives and injured at least 60 people, some severely.
Haseloff said that the suspected perpetrator had lived in Germany since 2006 and worked in Magdeburg as a doctor, and appeared to be acting alone.
He described the incident as “a terrible tragedy and it is a catastrophe for the city, for the state [of Saxony-Anhalt] and also for Germany as a whole”.
“It’s really one of the worst things you can imagine in the context of what a Christmas market is supposed to be.”
Eyewitnesses told the German broadcaster MDR that the car drove straight into people in the Old Market in Magdeburg’s city centre, not far from its Gothic cathedral.
Footage broadcast of the aftermath showed dozens of groups of people tending to the injured under Christmas stalls festooned with baubles and festive lighting. Dozens of ambulances and paramedics attended the scene.
A spokesperson for the Saxony-Anhalt regional government told the dpa news agency that it was “probably an attack”.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the reports coming from Magdeburg, a city of about 240,000 people on the Elbe river, appeared bad.
“My thoughts are with the victims and their families,” he said. “We stand by their side and by the side of the people of Magdeburg. My thanks go to the dedicated rescue workers in these anxious hours.”
The frontrunner in Germany’s upcoming elections in February, Christian Democratic leader Friedrich Merz, said: “This is very depressing news from Magdeburg. My thoughts are with the victims and their families. I thank all the emergency services who are caring for the injured on site.”
The incident comes almost eight years to the day since 12 people were killed and 49 injured in 2016, when a 24-year-old Tunisian failed asylum seeker drove into a Christmas market in Berlin. A 13th victim of the attack, responsibility for which was claimed by the jihadist group Isis, died in 2021.
German federal interior minister Nancy Faeser recently called for vigilance when visiting Christmas markets. Speaking at the end of November, she said that there was no concrete evidence of an immediate threat, but she added: “Given the high level of threat in the abstract, we still have reason to be very vigilant and to act consistently for our security.”
The incident comes as Germany gears up for early elections in February, in which migration and law and order are set to feature strongly. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is currently polling in second place.
The party secured a historic first place finish in regional elections in the eastern state of Thuringia earlier this year, and finished second in two other neighbouring regions.
The votes took place shortly after a terror attack in August in the town of Solingen, when a Syrian national suspected of being a member of Isis fatally stabbed three people and injured eight others.
The incident was seized upon by the AfD as well as the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), both of which said that uncontrolled immigration had led to a surge in violent crime on German streets.
The AfD’s leader and candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, said that the images coming out of Magdeburg were “shocking”, adding: “When will this madness end?”