The death toll from the attack in Germany – where a man drove a car at high speed into shoppers at a Christmas market – rose to five people on Saturday, December 21, including a 9-year-old child.
On Friday, December 20, a man drove through a holiday market in Magdeburg, Germany, west of Berlin, in what officials called a “terrible” event that resulted in deaths, multiple serious injuries and an arrest at gunpoint, according to ABC. News and NBC News.
Officials called the incident a terror attack, with footage from the market showing many people on the ground as emergency services arrived on the scene.
Authorities have since announced that they have arrested a suspect, a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia who has lived in Germany since 2006, according to the Associated Press. Reiner Haseloff, premier of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, told reporters that the suspect acted alone and that there was no ongoing threat to the public, according to NBC News, which reported that the vehicle reportedly drove about 350 meters into the alley full of shoppers . .
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that 40 of the 200 injured were “so seriously injured that we should be very concerned,” according to the AP. “There is no more peaceful and cheerful place than a Christmas market,” Scholz added. “What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such cruelty.”
Stefan Sauer/Photo Alliance via Getty
The scene outside the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, on December 21, 2024
According to CNN, the Christmas market featured 140 stalls, an ice skating rink, a Ferris wheel and more, as it would be open from November 22 to December 29.
Horst Walter Nopens, chief prosecutor of the Magdeburg Public Prosecutor’s Office, said on Saturday that among the victims was a 9-year-old. He added that the suspect faces “five counts of murder and 200 counts of attempted murder and aggravated assault,” according to CNN.
About 80 patients were taken to Magdeburg University Hospital on Friday evening, neurosurgeon Mahmoud Elenbaby told the AP, adding that “many are still in intensive care, and some are also in critical condition.”
In a social media update, Magdeburg Saxony-Anhalt police wrote on
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters that the suspect was “obviously Islamophobic,” according to NBC News. The AP reported that the man identified himself on social media as a former Muslim and criticized Islam on X (formerly Twitter). Citing local media, the AP reported that the suspect has since been identified only as Taleb A. (with his last name withheld due to local privacy laws).
The Saudi Foreign Ministry shared on X its “solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims.”
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Thi Linh Chi Nguyen – who worked at a salon near the market – told the AP that she saw the vehicle driving through the market at high speed and throwing a child into the air before police stopped the suspect at a nearby tram. Stop.
“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the wounded. And it was so cold,” she said.
Bystander images from the German news agency DPA and the AP showed the police holding the suspect at gunpoint. When an officer pointed a gun at the suspect, multiple vehicles arrived on the scene and other officers then surrounded him.
“For me it is important that when such a terrible, terrible event takes place, a terrible attack in which so many people are injured and killed, almost on the anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, that we as a country stick together and stay together. Scholz told reporters, according to CNN, referring to a 2016 attack on a Christmas market in Berlin.
A memorial service will be held at Magdeburg Cathedral at 7pm local time on Saturday, with crowds already paying their respects outside the church.
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