Death toll in German Christmas market attack reaches 5, with at least 200 wounded

Nearly 40 seriously injured; experts surprised by profile of alleged Saudi attacker who supports far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party; Riyadh condemns ramming

Forensics work on a damaged car sitting with its doors open after a driver plowed into a busy Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, Dec. 21, 2024. (Hendrik Schmidt/dpa via AP)
Forensics work on a damaged car sitting with its doors open after a driver plowed into a busy Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, Dec. 21, 2024. (Hendrik Schmidt/dpa via AP)

MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned both the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a small child, and injuring at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning.

He has lived in Germany for nearly two decades, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The governor of the surrounding state of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll rose from two to five and that more than 200 people in total were injured.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that nearly 40 of them “are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”

Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Police officers walk through a cordoned-off Christmas Market, where a car drove into a crowd in Magdeburg, Germany, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

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.

The man behind the attack

There were still no answers Saturday as to what caused him to drive into a crowd in the eastern German city of Magdeburg.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. He has also voiced support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Recently, he seemed focused on his theory that German authorities have been targeting Saudi asylum seekers.

Security guards stand in front of a cordoned-off Christmas Market after a car crashed into a crowd of people, in Magdeburg, Germany, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Prominent German terrorism expert Peter Neumann said he had yet to come across 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 International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College 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, told reporters. “Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many.”

Magdeburg is still shaken

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

A young woman lights a candle at a makeshift memorial of flowers and a rainbow flag for the victims on August 24, 2024 close to the scene where at least three people were killed and several injured when a man attacked them with a knife on late August 23, 2024 in Solingen, western Germany, during a festival to mark the city’s 650th anniversary. (Roberto Pfeil / AFP)

Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack 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.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (C, first row), German Minister for Transport and Digital Affairs and of Justice Volker Wissing (L), German Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection Steffi Lemke (2R) and leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Friedrich Merz (3R, back) visit the site of a car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, eastern Germany, on December 21, 2024 (Ronny HARTMANN / AFP)

A recount of the horrifying attack

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road.

A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

A police officer guards at a blocked road near a Christmas market after an incident in Magdeburg, Germany, December 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

The number of injured people 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 said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters (about 54 yards). Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market.

Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.

Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry condemned the attack on X.

Most Popular
read more: