“Torn from my side”: Horror over attack on German Christmas market

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Shocked survivors recounted the moment a car attack turned a glittering Christmas market in eastern Germany into a scene of death and carnage on Friday.

Families were crowding around a large Christmas tree in the market in central Magdeburg when a BMW sped towards them around 7 p.m. (1800 GMT).

“We didn’t hear the car,” a 32-year-old woman named Nadine told the Bild daily, saying she had come from western Germany to visit the famous Old Town Square market.

She said she was holding her 39-year-old boyfriend Marco in her arms when he was “ripped from my side” by the SUV that sped 400 meters through the crowd.

“It was terrible,” she said.

The screams of the wounded echoed through the panicked crowd, where the car had left a trail of bloodied injuries and debris.

When more than 100 rescue workers later arrived at the chaotic scene of the accident, Nadine said desperately that she did not know which hospital her partner had been taken to.

“The insecurity is unbearable,” she said, as authorities reported that at least two people had died, including a child, and more than 60 were injured.

Police said they had arrested one suspect, a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian doctor.

No extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack, but supporters of the Islamic State group celebrated online with messages such as “Merry Christmas, infidel,” SITE Intelligence Group reported.

Local newspaper Volksstimme said reports from the crime scene suggested the attacker “drove across the market in a zigzag motion – obviously trying to hit as many people as possible.”

A viewer told Welt TV that when it was all over, “everyone was on the floor – children, men, injured people, it’s unimaginable.”

“It’s terrible, there was a body next to me the whole time,” another eyewitness told Welt.

“I thought I was going to a Christmas market and then something like this happened. The world is sick.”

Germany is famous for its enchanting Christmas markets, and Magdeburg prides itself on stalls selling local crafts, marzipan and dozens of varieties of mulled wine.

Magdeburg was lit up with sparkling Christmas decorations and over a million LED lights, but after the attack, flashing blue police lights illuminated the crime scene while sirens wailed.

Footage taken by those in attendance and distributed by local media showed people rushing between the festive stalls to help and comfort those lying on the ground.

Television footage from the scene showed dozens of rescue workers tending to the wounded, some shielded by white plastic tents, while loudspeaker announcements urged people to go home.

Police squads with assault rifles secured the crime scene in Magdeburg, a city of around 240,000 residents in communist East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

While the news spread and condolences poured in from politicians, the fans of the city’s football club FC Magdeburg fell silent at the away game against Fortuna Düsseldorf.

Later on Friday evening, the first condolence flowers had already been left at the crime scene.

Magdeburg’s mayor Simone Borris fought back tears and announced that a memorial service would take place in the city’s main cathedral on Saturday.

One woman summed up the stunned mood to the daily newspaper “Die Welt”: “I don’t know what world we live in where someone would use such a peaceful event to spread terror.”