A driver drove into a crowd of people at the Christmas markets in Magdeburg, at least 2 dead and 68 injured. The detainee is a Saudi doctor

According to witnesses quoted by Bild newspaper, the perpetrator drove a dark BMW car directly into the people towards the town hall at 19:04. The car broke through the barriers and drove at high speed. According to the police, the car drove about 400 meters between people before it was stopped.

Market visitors fled the scene in panic. The square was immediately closed and authorities urged the public to leave the city center. The Magdeburg rescue service sent dozens of ambulances to the scene.

According to the Magdeburg town hall, 68 people were injured in the attack, of which 15 are in critical condition. Saxony-Anhalt Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff, who arrived at the scene, is talking about two confirmed victims so far, one of them, according to him, is a child. The original information was about 11 people killed. According to the prime minister, it is not excluded that the number of victims will increase even more.

The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that it is monitoring the entire situation. The identity of the victims and the injured will be released by the police on Saturday.

The police arrested the perpetrator immediately after the crime. The authorities are talking about a terrorist attack. According to the Welt newspaper, which refers to security sources, the detainee is allegedly a 50-year-old man from Saudi Arabia. According to Focus magazine, the authorities had no information that this was an Islamist radical.

Citing police sources, Bild reported that the man worked as a doctor at a local clinic. The perpetrator acted alone and, according to Reiner Haseloff, has an unlimited residence permit in Germany. He has been in the country since 2006.

As reported by the DPA agency, the entire background of the attack is not yet known. The authorities are therefore not talking about a terrorist act, but about an “attack” or a “probable attack”.

The perpetrator had rented the car shortly before. According to the police, a device that could explode was found in the car. Because of the suspicious object, she closed the nearby area and called in pyrotechnics. After midnight, the police announced that they did not find any explosives in the car. Tracy Heringová from the Magdeburg police told the media.

Due to the attack in Magdeburg, the Christmas market in Erfurt was evacuated. It can be expected that other Christmas markets in Germany will also be closed.

The Federal Chancellor stated that “the news from Magdeburg suggests the worst.” “My thoughts are with the victims and their relatives. We stand by their side and by the side of the people of Magdeburg. My thanks go to the selfless rescuers in these anxious hours,” he wrote on the X network.

The head of the Christian Democrats (CDU) Friedrich Merz, who is running for the office of Federal Chancellor, also responded. “It is a very depressing news from Magdeburg. My thoughts are with the victims and their relatives. I would like to thank all the rescue teams who are taking care of the injured on the spot,” he said.

Magdeburg City Hall spokesman Michael Reif described the scenes from the scene of the incident as “terrible” and witnesses compared the situation to “war scenes”. The injured lay on the ground and the rescuers carried them to the tents, where they provided first aid.

The incident in Magdeburg happened just one day after Germany commemorated the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attack on Christmas markets in Berlin. A rejected asylum seeker from Tunisia then drove a truck into a crowd and killed eleven people, including one Czech woman.

Another dead person was a Polish truck driver who was shot by the attacker. The thirteenth victim was a man who survived the attack itself, but suffered a serious brain injury while helping the survivors. He died in 2021. The bomber was shot by the police in Italy a few days after the attack.