Death toll in attack on German Christmas market rises to 5, over 200 injured

MAGDEBURG, Germany >> At least five people were killed and more than 200 injured in a car attack at a German Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg, officials said. A Saudi man was arrested on suspicion of driving into the crowd.

Friday night’s attack on market-goers gathered to celebrate the run-up to Christmas comes amid a heated debate over security and migration during an election campaign in Germany, where the far right is performing strongly in polls.

“What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the city center of the former GDR, where he laid a white rose at a church in honor of the victims.

“We have now learned that over 200 people were injured,” he added. “Almost 40 are so seriously injured that we have to be very worried about them.”

The German authorities are investigating a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who has lived in Germany for almost two decades in connection with the car accident. Police searched his house overnight.

The motive remained unclear and police have not yet released the name of the suspect. In German media he was referred to as Taleb A.

A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia warned German authorities about the attacker after he posted extremist views that threatened peace and security on his personal X account.

Der Spiegel reported that the suspect sympathized with the right-wing extremist party Alternative for Germany (AfD). The magazine did not say where it got the information.

The German domestic secret service did not want to comment on the ongoing investigation.

German newspaper FAZ said it interviewed the suspect in 2019 and described him as an anti-Islam activist.

“People like me, who have an Islamic background but are no longer a believer, find neither understanding nor tolerance among Muslims here,” he was quoted as saying. “I am the most aggressive critic of Islam in history. If you don’t believe me, ask the Arabs.”

Andrea Reis, who had been at the market on Friday, returned on Saturday with her daughter Julia to lay a candle next to the church overlooking the grounds. She said they might have been in the way of the car if it hadn’t stopped for a moment.

“I said, ‘Let’s get a sausage,’ but my daughter said, ‘No, let’s keep walking around.’ If we had stayed, we would have been in the way of the car,” she said.

Tears streamed down her face as she described the scene. “Children scream, cry for mom. “You can’t forget that,” she said.

Scholz’s Social Democrats are trailing both the far-right AfD and the leading conservative opposition in opinion polls ahead of new elections scheduled for February 23.

The AfD, which enjoys particularly strong support in the former East, is a pioneer in calls for tough action against immigration to the country.

Her chancellor candidate Alice Weidel and her co-leader Tino Chrupalla issued a statement on Saturday condemning the attack.

“The terrible attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg in the middle of the peaceful pre-Christmas period shocked us,” they said.

A leading Social Democratic member of the Bundestag warned against jumping to conclusions and said the attacker did not appear to have an Islamist motive.

“Now we have to wait for the investigation. “It seems to be different here than initially assumed,” said Dirk Wiese to the Rheinische Post.