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Citizens pay their respects to the dead in front of St. John’s Church, near a Christmas market, where a car drove into the crowd Friday evening, in Magdeburg, Germany, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noorozi)
MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans mourned Saturday the victims and their shattered sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally entered a Christmas market teeming with Christmas shoppers, killing at least five people, including a toddler child, and injuring at least 200 others.
Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the scene of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany since 2006 and practices medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers south of Magdeburg. » officials said.
State Governor Reiner Haseloff told reporters that the death toll had risen to five, up from two, and that more than 200 people in total had been injured.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that nearly 40 of them “are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”
“There is no place more peaceful and joyful than a Christmas market,” Scholz said. “What a terrible act to injure and kill so many people with such brutality. »
Neurosurgeon Mahmoud Elenbaby said some 80 patients were brought to Magdeburg University Hospital on Friday evening.
“We have managed to stabilize most of them, but many are still in intensive care, and some are also in critical condition,” Elenbaby told The Associated Press as he rushed into the hospital’s cafeteria. hospital to buy a cola.
Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., without disclosing his last name, in line with privacy laws, and said he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.
Mourners lit candles and laid flowers outside a church near the market on a cold, gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous attack on a Christmas market in 2016 sang amazing Gracea hymn to God’s mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.
There were still no answers Saturday as to what motivated the man to drive his black BMW into crowds in this eastern German city.
Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and praising Muslims who have abandoned the faith.
He also accused German authorities of not doing enough to combat what he called “the Islamism of Europe.”
The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to tears and spoiling a festive event that is part of a centuries-old German tradition. This prompted several other German cities to cancel their weekend Christmas markets, as a precaution and in solidarity with the loss of Magdeburg. Berlin has kept its markets open but has reinforced the police presence there.
Germany has suffered a series of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and injured eight others at a festival in Solingen, in the west of the country, in August.
Magdeburg is a city of around 240,000 inhabitants, west of Berlin, which serves as the capital of Saxony-Anhalt. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamist extremist rammed a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed a few days later in a shooting in Italy.
Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser visited Magdeburg on Saturday and a memorial ceremony will take place in the evening in the city’s cathedral. Faeser ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at federal buildings across the country.
Verified footage released by German news agency dpa shows the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer, pointing a handgun at the man, yelled at him as he lay on his stomach with his head slightly bowed. Other officers surrounded the suspect and took him into custody.
Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old Vietnamese manicurist whose salon is located in a shopping center opposite the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard a loud bang and initially thought it was It was a fireworks display. She then saw a car driving through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.
Trembling as she describes the horror of what she witnessed, she remembers seeing the car speed out of the market and turn right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee, then stop at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.
The number of injured was overwhelming.
“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because there weren’t enough to cover the injured. And it was so cold,” she said.
The market itself was still cordoned off on Saturday with red and white tape and police vans every 50 meters (yards). Police armed with submachine guns guarded each entrance to the market. Some thermal safety blankets were still lying on the street.
Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition enjoyed since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.
Moulson reported from Berlin and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.
