A summary of Saturday’s developments
Five people, including a child, have died after a car ploughed into a crowd of people at a Christmas market in the eastern German town of Magdeburg on Friday eveningin what local officials are describing as a terror attack.
More then 200 people were injured in the attackwith 40 in critical condition.
Police have arrested a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia who they believe is responsible for the attackaccording to the German state premier, Reiner Haseloff.
A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia had warned German authorities about the attacker after he posted extremist views on his personal X account that threatened peace and security. Der Spiegel reported that the suspect had sympathised with the AfD. The magazine did not say where it got the information.
A memorial service has held on Saturday in Magdeburg Cathedral with German chancellor Olaf Scholz and interior minister Nancy Faeser among the mourners along with German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Leader of Saxony Anhalt state Reiner Haseloff describes the scene as “an unimaginable incident”. Haselhof says the scale of the attack is much bigger than previously thought, with the death toll having risen and the extent of those injured much larger than the estimates given last night.
A woman in her 50s with a bad bruise to her right eye, told the tabloid Bild how she and her husband were “flung in the air” in the attack. She was initially unconscious, her husband suffered injuries to his upper thigh and described how the “flesh was ripped out” of it in the impact.
Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God’s mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.
Key events
Kate Connolly
The 50-year-old doctor is in police custody after a black BMW SUV ploughed 400 metres through a crowded market at speed, driving over some people and flinging others up into the air. A nine-year-old girl is among the dead.
There are 41 people in a critical condition with life-threatening injuries and the injured are being treated at 15 clinics around the country.
Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, who came to Germany in 2006 and applied for asylum a decade later, was apprehended by armed police in a dramatic altercation as shocked bystanders looked on just minutes after the attack. He was repeatedly told to “lie on the ground” adjacent to the battered BMW that moments before had mown scores of people to the ground.
Forensic scientists are investigating the possibility that Abdulmohsen had deliberately turned off the emergency braking mechanism on the BMW X3, which he had hired before the attack, in order to maximise its impact.
At a press conference held by police and prosecutors on Saturday evening, officials said initial questioning of Abdulmohsen, who has been charged with five murders and 200 attempted murders, had taken place, but declined to reveal anything the suspect had said. However, when asked about his motivation, the chief state prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens said: “It could be he was dissatisfied with the way in which Saudi Arabian refugees were dealt with in Magdeburg.”
Pope Francis has sent a message of support to German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier following yesterday’s attack in Magdeburg.
In the message, released by the Vatican, the Pope said he was “shocked by the news of the attack”.
He added he “thanks all those who are working and supporting the victims in this difficult time”.
Andrea Reis, 57, earlier arrived at the nearby Magdeburg Cathedral with her daughter Julia, 34, to pay their respects.
It was only because her daughter wanted them to keep walking round the market rather than stop to eat that they were not in the path of the car that ploughed through the market, she said.
“It was the terrible sounds, children calling ‘mama, papa,’, ‘help me’ – they’re going round in my head now,” Reis told Reuters.
A memorial service has started in Magdeburg Cathedral with German chancellor Olaf Scholz and interior minister Nancy Faeser among the mourners along with German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Magdeburg city official Ronni Krug said that 41 of the hundreds of people injured had either serious or critical injuries.
“I don’t know about you, but I associate the Christmas market with mulled wine and bratwurst, and yesterday [Friday] people died in this area. Others are fighting for their lives,” Krug said.
