A car has ploughed into a busy outdoor Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, killing at least two people and injuring at least 60 others in what authorities called a deliberate attack.
The driver was arrested at the scene shortly after the car barrelled into the market at around 7pm on Friday when it was teeming with holiday shoppers looking forward to the weekend.
Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect surrender. He stood in the middle of the road and put his hands up before lying down and waiting for armed officers to take him into custody.
The two people confirmed dead were an adult and a toddler, but officials said additional deaths could not be ruled out because 15 people had been seriously injured.
The violence shocked the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that is part of a centuries-old German tradition.
The suspect is a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who moved to Germany in 2006, said Tamara Zieschang, the interior minister for the state of Saxony-Anhalt. He had been practising medicine in Bernburg, about 25 miles south of Magdeburg, she said.
“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, told reporters.
“Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many.”
The violence occurred in a city of about 240,000 people west of Berlin that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital.
It came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
Christmas markets are a huge part of German culture as an annual holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages and successfully exported to much of the western world.
German interior minister Nancy Faeser said late last month that there were no concrete indications of a danger to Christmas markets this year, but that it was wise to be vigilant.
Magdeburg resident Dorin Steffen told dpa she was at a concert in a nearby church when she heard the sirens. The noise was so loud “you had to assume that something terrible had happened”.
She called the attack “a dark day” for the city.
“We are shaking,” Ms Steffen said. “Full of sympathy for the relatives, also in the hope that nothing has happened to our relatives, friends and acquaintances.”
The attack reverberated far beyond Magdeburg, with Mr Haseloff calling it a catastrophe for the city, state and country. He said flags would be lowered to half-mast in Saxony-Anhalt and that the federal government planned to do the same.
“It is really one of the worst things one can imagine, particularly in connection with what a Christmas market should bring,” the governor said.
Chancellor OIaf Scholz posted on X: “My thoughts are with the victims and their relatives. We stand beside them and beside the people of Magdeburg.”
Magdeburg mayor Simone Borris, who was on the verge of tears, said officials plan to arrange a memorial at the city’s cathedral on Saturday.
