By EBRAHIM NOROOZI, CHRIS STERN and GEIR MOULSON
MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — A automotive plowed right into a busy out of doors Christmas market within the japanese German metropolis of Magdeburg on Friday, killing no less than two individuals and injuring no less than 60 others in what authorities consider was an assault.
The motive force was arrested shortly after the automotive barreled into the market at round 7 p.m., when it was teeming with vacation consumers wanting ahead to the weekend.
The suspect is a 50-year-old Saudi physician who moved to Germany in 2006, Tamara Zieschang, the inside minister for the state of Saxony-Anhalt, stated at a information convention. He has been practising drugs in Bernburg, about 23 miles (36 kilometers) south of Magdeburg, she stated.
“As issues stand, he’s a lone perpetrator, in order that so far as we all know there is no such thing as a additional hazard to town,” Saxony-Anhalt’s governor, Reiner Haseloff, advised reporters.
Fifteen of the injured have been have been harm very significantly, in response to authorities officers and town authorities’s web site.
Haseloff stated the 2 individuals confirmed to have died have been an grownup and a toddler, however that he couldn’t rule out additional deaths.
“However that’s hypothesis now. Each human life that has fallen sufferer to this assault is a horrible tragedy and one human life too many,” he stated.
The suspected assault in Magdeburg, a metropolis of about 240,000 individuals west of Berlin that Saxony-Anhalt’s capital, got here eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 individuals and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
Christmas markets are an enormous a part of German tradition as an annual vacation custom cherished because the Center Ages and efficiently exported to a lot of the Western world. In Berlin alone, greater than 100 markets opened late final month and introduced the smells of mulled wine, roasted almonds and bratwurst to the capital. Different markets abound throughout the nation.
German Inside Minister Nancy Faeser stated late final month that there have been no concrete indications of a hazard to Christmas markets this 12 months, however that it was smart to be vigilant.
Hours after Friday’s suspected assault, the ring of sirens clashed with the market’s festive ornaments, stars and leafy garlands.
The assault reverberated past Magdeburg. After a soccer match Friday night between Bayern Munich and Leipzig, Bayern CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen requested followers on the membership’s stadium to watch a minute of silence.
Magdeburg resident Dorin Steffen advised German information company dpa that she was at a live performance in a close-by church when she heard the sirens. The cacophony was so loud “you needed to assume that one thing horrible had occurred.”
She known as the assault “a darkish day” for town.
“We’re shaking,” Steffen stated. “Stuffed with sympathy for the family members, additionally within the hope that nothing has occurred to our family members, pals and acquaintances.”
Haseloff known as it a disaster for town, state and nation, including that flags will likely be lowered to half-staff in Saxony-Anhalt and that the federal authorities deliberate to do the identical.
“It’s actually one of many worst issues one can think about, notably in reference to what a Christmas market ought to convey,” the governor stated.
Chancellor OIaf Scholz posted on X: “My ideas are with the victims and their family members. We stand beside them and beside the individuals of Magdeburg.”
Magdeburg Mayor Simone Borris, who was on the verge of tears, stated officers plan to rearrange a memorial on the metropolis’s cathedral on Saturday.
The assault reverberated past Magdeburg. After a soccer match Friday night between Bayern Munich and Leipzig, Bayern CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen requested followers on the membership’s stadium to watch a minute of silence.
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Moulson reported from Berlin.
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This story was corrected to point out that Saxony-Anhalt’s inside minister, Tamara Zieschang, not state governor Reiner Haseloff, advised reporters that the suspect is a 50-year-old Saudi physician who first got here to Germany in 2006.
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