USA Today, by Michael Loria and Eduardo Cuevas: A driver rammed a crowd of merrymakers at a Christmas market in a city in central Germany on Friday evening, leaving at least five people dead and more than 200 injured, nearly 40 critically, officials said.
The market is located the city of Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, where people had gathered to celebrate the Christmas holidays. One of the dead was a young child, said Reiner Haseloff, premier of Saxony-Anhalt.
“It’s a terrible tragedy. It is a catastrophe for the city of Magdeburg, for the state and for Germany in general,” said Haseloff, adding the death toll could rise due to the severity of the injuries.
The news comes just a month after German interior minister Nancy Faeser advised people to be vigilant at Christmas markets, which security services say could be a potential target for extremist attacks.
A devastating scene
Andrea Reis, who had been at the market on Friday, returned on Saturday with her daughter Julia to lay a candle by the church overlooking the site.
Tears ran down her face as she described the scene. “Children screaming, crying for mama. You can’t forget that” she said.
She said that had it not been for a matter of moments, they may have been in the car’s path.
“I said, ‘let’s go and get a sausage’, but my daughter said, ‘no let’s keep walking around’. If we’d stayed where we were we’d have been in the car’s path,” she said.
Who was the driver?
Police have taken the suspected attacker into custody. Haseloff described him as a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia with permanent residency in Germany, where he had lived for almost two decades. Police searched his home overnight.
“As things stand at the moment, we are talking about a lone offender, which means that there is no further danger to the city because we were able to arrest him,” Haseloff said.
The motive remained unclear and police have not yet named the suspect. Posts on his X account, verified by Reuters, indicated support for anti-Islam and far-right parties, including the Alternative for Germany (AfD), as well as criticism of Germany for its handling of Saudi refugees.
Faeser, the German interior minister, said the suspect’s Islamophobia was clear to see, but she declined to comment on motive.
A video posted on social media shows a car speeding through a crowd caught between two rows of market stalls. People can be seen knocked to the ground and running away.
Where is Magdeburg, Germany?
Magdeburg is a city of around 200,000 in central Germany. It is the capital of the state of Saxony-Anhalt and is located around 100 miles west of Berlin.
Has this happened before?
In Berlin in 2016, Anis Amri, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker with Islamist links, plowed a truck through a crowded market, killing 12 people and injuring nearly 60 people. Among those killed was a truck driver from whom Amri stole the vehicle, according to German broadcaster DW.
A Tunisian man living in France carried out a similar attack on revelers celebrating Bastille Day in Nice in 2016.
Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a truck through a crowd, killing at least 84 people and injuring hundreds in a 15-minute attack, according to Reuters.
It’s unclear what vehicle the driver in Magdeburg used.
German Chancellor reacts
On Saturday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz laid a white rose at a church in honor of the victims.
“What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality,” he said.
“We have now learned that over 200 people have been injured,” he added. “Almost 40 are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”
Prophetic Link:
“The press publishes the revolting details of vice, thus initiating others into the practice of fraud, robbery, and murder; and Satan exults in the success of his hellish schemes. The infatuation of vice, the wanton taking of life, the terrible increase of intemperance and iniquity of every order and degree, should arouse all who fear God, to inquire what can be done to stay the tide of evil.” Great Controversy, page 585.2.
Comments