At least two people were killed and 68 injured Friday in a suspected attack on a Christmas market in the eastern Germany city of Magdeburg, local authorities said.
“At the current time emergency services confirm the following numbers: one dead, 15 seriously injured, 37 moderately injured, 16 lightly injured,” said city authorities in a Facebook post, adding that “a car drove into a crowd of people at the Christmas market at high speed”.
A Saudi man has been arrested for the attack. “We have arrested the perpetrator, it is a man from Saudi Arabia,” state premier of Saxony-Anhalt Reiner Haseloff told reporters at the scene.
The suspect was “a doctor who has been in Germany since 2006”, Haseloff said.
Authorities were “in the process of gathering all further data and also conducting an interrogation”, he said.
“From what we currently know, he was a lone attacker, so we don’t think there is any further danger for the city.”
The suspect was 50 years old, Saxony-Anhalt’s regional interior minister Tamara Zieschang said alongside Haseloff.
The man from Saudi Arabia lived in Bernburg, some 40 kilometres (24 miles) south of Magdeburg, and had “a permanent residence permit”, Zieschang said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz would visit the scene on Saturday, Haseloff said.
Haseloff said he and Scholz would discuss the “necessary measures” to be taken next.
“We now need to work through this and draw long-term consequences,” Haseloff said.
add your comment
Terms of publication : Not to offend the writer, people, sacred things, or attack religions or the divine self, and refrain from racist incitement and insults.