It was like being in a war zone, a witness describes the attack on the Christmas markets in Magdeburg

One of the women interviewed by Mitteldeutsche Zeitung said that the car entered the “fairytale part” of the Magdeburg markets at high speed. Shortly after seven o’clock in the evening, when the attack took place, there were many families with children. She herself managed to jump into the car with her child.

“It was like a war zone,” described the situation after the attack by the owner of the hamburger stand, around which the car crashed. Images from social networks show a large number of injured people lying on the ground.

Bildu’s reporter spoke with thirty-two-year-old Nadine, who went to the markets with her seven-year-older boyfriend, Marc. At the moment when the attack happened, they were hugging each other. While Nadine was lucky, Marco was knocked down by the attacker. “He knocked him down, it was terrible. Nobody even shouted. You couldn’t even hear the car,” she described the terrible experience.

Marco suffered head and leg injuries. “We don’t know which hospital they took him to, the uncertainty is unbearable,” said Nadine.

At the time of the attack, the football team of Magdeburg was playing a second league match at the stadium in Düsseldorf. In the 2nd half, people learned what had happened, and the stands fell silent in horror. The newspaper Bild notes that even the players on the pitch found out about the attack and did not celebrate the goals. Ten minutes before the end, information about what happened appeared on the large screens.

After the match, the players stood in front of the fans in a thank-you ceremony, but it was carried in silence. Nobody thought about football.

The 50-year-old Saudi, who has lived in Germany since 2006 and worked in Magdeburg as a doctor at a local clinic, drove into the crowd of people at the Christmas markets shortly after seven o’clock on Friday evening. According to information valid after eleven o’clock in the evening, he killed at least two people (one of them a child) and injured at least 68 others.