At least 2 killed, dozens injured after car rams into crowd at Christmas market in Germany

A car plowed into a busy outdoor Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, killing at least two people and injuring at least 60 others in what authorities suspect was a deliberate attack.

The driver was arrested shortly after the car barrelled into the market at around 7 p.m. local time, when it was teeming with holiday shoppers looking forward to the weekend. 

Tamara Zieschang, the interior minister for the state of Saxony-Anhalt, told reporters that the suspect is a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who first came to Germany in 2006.

Saxony-Anhalt's governor, Reiner Haseloff, said the suspect appears to be a "lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city."

Haseloff said the two people confirmed to have died were an adult and a toddler, but that he couldn't rule out further deaths.

"It is really one of the worst things one can imagine, particularly in connection with what a Christmas market should bring," he said.

Magdeburg Mayor Simone Borris, on the verge of tears, said officials plan to arrange a memorial at the city's cathedral on Saturday.

Fifteen of the injured were were hurt very seriously, according to government officials and the city government's website.

A video posted on social media from a position above the market shows a car driving at speed through a crowd walking between two rows of market stalls. People can be seen knocked to the ground and running away. Reuters was able to verify the location, with the trees, outline and design of the buildings matching file and satellite imagery of the area.

The suspected attack in Magdeburg, a city of about 240,000 people west of Berlin, comes eight years after an Islamic extremist plowed through a crowded Christmas market in the capital with a truck, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Christmas markets are a huge part of German culture — an annual tradition cherished since the Middle Ages and successfully exported to much of the Western world. 

In Berlin alone, more than 100 markets opened late last month and brought the smells of mulled wine, roasted almonds and bratwurst to the capital. Other markets abound across the country.

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.

Migration has been a major source of tension in German politics since large numbers of refugees and other migrants arrived in 2015. The government has been under pressure to reduce irregular migration, and has taken measures including imposing border checks.

'A dark day'

The suspected attack reverberated beyond Magdeburg. After a soccer match Friday evening between Bayern Munich and Leipzig, Bayern CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen asked fans at the club's stadium to observe a minute of silence.

Magdeburg resident Dorin Steffen told the German news agency DPA that she was at a concert in a nearby church when she heard the sirens. The cacophony was so loud "you had to assume that something terrible had happened."

She called it "a dark day" for the city. "We are shaking," Steffen said. "Full of sympathy for the relatives, also in the hope that nothing has happened to our relatives, friends and acquaintances."

German 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."