Death toll in apparent Christmas market attack in Germany rises to 5 – National

Germans on Saturday mourn the victims of an apparent attack in which authorities say a doctor drove into a busy Christmas market, killing five people, injuring 200 others and shaking the public’s sense of security at what would otherwise be a time of joy and wonder.

The alleged attack Friday night in Magdeburg, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Berlin, killed a 9-year-old and four adults and injured 41 people badly enough that authorities warned the death toll could rise.

Magdeburg marked the tragedy on Saturday with the tolling of church bells at 19:04, the exact time of the attack in the city of roughly 240,000 people.

The driver, a 50-year-old doctor who immigrated from Saudi Arabia in 2006, surrendered to the police on the spot. He is being investigated for five charges of suspected murder and 205 charges of suspected attempted murder, prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens said at a press conference.

Investigators are investigating, among other things, whether the attack could have been motivated by the suspect’s dissatisfaction with the way Germany treats Saudi refugees, said Nopens.

“There is no quieter and more cheerful place than a Christmas market,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality.”

Although Nopens called the treatment of Saudi immigrants corner, authorities said Saturday that they still do not know why the suspect drove his black BMW in the crowded market.

The police have not publicly named the suspect, but several German news outlets identified him as Taleb A., kept his last name in accordance with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

The suspect describes himself as a former Muslim, and appears to have been an active user of the social media platform X, sharing dozens of tweets and retweets daily targeting anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith to have.

He also accused German authorities of not doing enough to combat what he called the “Islamification of Europe”.

The violence rocked Germany and Magdeburg, which is the capital of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and damaging the centuries-old German tradition of Christmas markets. It led several other communities to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and in solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept many of its markets open, but increased its police presence in them.

Trending now

• German Christmas market murders: What we know about the suspect

• Most Canadians now want early election as Trudeau support drops again: poll

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and injured eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shooting in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and in the evening a memorial service will take place in the city’s cathedral. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified footage from bystanders distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the arrest of the suspect at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby policeman pointing a gun at the man yelled at him as he lay by, his head slightly raised. Other officers wandered around the suspect and took him on.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a shopping center opposite the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs that she thought were fireworks. She then saw a car driving through the market at high speed. People cried and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Trembling as she described what she had witnessed, she recalled seeing the car burst out of the market and turn right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee Street and then come to a stop at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped her 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 said.

The market itself was still closed off with red and white tape and police vans on Saturday, because armed officers were waiting at every entrance. Some thermal security blankets were still lying on the street.

Moulson reported from Berlin and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.

& copy 2024 The Canadian Press