MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned each the victims and their shaken sense of safety after a Saudi physician deliberately drove right into a Christmas market teeming with vacation consumers, killing not less than 5 individuals, together with a small little one, and injuring not less than 200 others.
Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man on the website of the assault in Magdeburg on Friday night and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany for practically twenty years, practising drugs in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officers mentioned.
The governor of the encompassing state of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, advised reporters that the dying toll rose from two to 5 and that greater than 200 individuals in whole have been injured.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz mentioned that almost 40 of them “are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”
A number of German media shops recognized the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his final identify in keeping with privateness legal guidelines, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.
Mourners lit candles and positioned flowers exterior a church close to the market on the chilly and gloomy day. A number of individuals stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a earlier Christmas market assault in 2016 sang Superb Grace, a hymn about God’s mercy, providing their prayers and solidarity with the victims.
The person behind the assault
There have been nonetheless no solutions Saturday as to what induced him to drive right into a crowd within the jap German metropolis of Magdeburg.
Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets each day specializing in anti-Islam themes, criticizing the faith and congratulating Muslims who left the religion.
He additionally accused German authorities of failing to do sufficient to fight what he mentioned was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an activist who helped Saudi girls flee their homeland. He has additionally voiced help for the far-right and anti-immigrant Various for Germany (AfD) celebration.
Just lately, he appeared centered on his concept that German authorities have been focusing on Saudi asylum seekers.
Distinguished German terrorism professional Peter Neumann mentioned he had but to return throughout a suspect in an act of mass violence with that profile.
“After 25 years in this ‘business’ you think nothing could surprise you anymore. But a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in East Germany, loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists — that really wasn’t on my radar, ” Neumann, the director of the Worldwide Centre for the Examine of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s School London, wrote on X.
“As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city,” Saxony-Anhalt’s governor, Reiner Haseloff, advised reporters. “Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many.”
Magdeburg remains to be shaken
The violence shocked Germany and town, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive occasion that’s a part of a centuries-old German custom. It prompted a number of different German cities to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin saved its markets open however has elevated its police presence at them.
Germany has suffered a string of extremist assaults lately, together with a knife assault that killed three individuals and wounded eight at a pageant within the western metropolis of Solingen in August.
Magdeburg is a metropolis of about 240,000 individuals, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s assault got here eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck right into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 individuals and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
Chancellor Scholz and Inside Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to happen within the metropolis cathedral within the night. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings throughout the nation.
A recount of the horrifying assault
Verified bystander footage distributed by the German information company dpa confirmed the suspect’s arrest at a tram cease in the midst of the highway. A close-by police officer pointing a handgun on the man shouted at him as he lay inclined, his head arched up barely. Different officers swarmed across the suspect and took him into custody.
Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is positioned in a mall throughout from the Christmas market, was on the telephone throughout a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they have been fireworks. She then noticed a automotive drive by way of the market at excessive pace. Folks screamed and a toddler was thrown into the air by the automotive.
Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the automotive bursting out of the market and turning proper onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee avenue after which coming to a standstill on the tram cease the place the suspect was arrested.
The variety of injured individuals was overwhelming.
“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 injured people. And it was so cold,” she mentioned.
The market itself was nonetheless cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans each 50 meters (about 54 yards). Police with machine pistols guarded each entry to the market.
Some thermal safety blankets nonetheless lay on the road.
Christmas markets are a German vacation custom cherished for the reason that Center Ages, now efficiently exported to a lot of the Western world.
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Saudi Arabia’s overseas ministry condemned the assault on X.
Aboubakr reported from Cairo and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.
