Christmas Market Hit by Horrific Attack - Numerous Casualties Reported
At least two people were killed in Germany Friday when a car drove at high speed into a Christmas market.
Initial reports said one of the people killed was a child, according to Sky News.
Estimates from officials in the city of Magdeburg, which is in eastern Germany west of Berlin, said that 68 people were injured in the incident.
Officials were not officially calling the incident terrorism on Friday, but city representative Michael Reif said he believes the attack was deliberate.
A 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia was arrested, according to Reiner Haseloff, premier of Saxony-Anhalt, the German state that includes the city.
“It’s a terrible tragedy. It is a catastrophe for the city of Magdeburg, for the state and for Germany in general,” Haseloff said, according to Reuters.
Haseloff, who said initial estimates of 11 dead were incorrect, said the man had lived in Germany since 2006 and had refugee status, according to the U.K.’s Guardian.
“As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city,” Haseloff said.
A woman who spoke to the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung newspaper said that the perpetrator had “driven deliberately into the section of the Christmas market decked out with scenes from fairytales, where a lot of families with young children were gathered,” the Guardian reported.
Officials said a rental car was used to conduct the attack, and that the man involved was not on the radar of local officials who monitor suspected terrorists.
“The police have put out a statement saying there’s an extensive police operation that’s going on and they haven’t officially said yet whether this is terror,” Sky News’s Europe correspondent Siobhan Robbins said, according to Sky News.
“That of course will be something that a lot of people will be asking. There has been a warning for Christmas markets across Europe to be on high alert for possible terror attacks,” she said.
Last month, German interior minister Nancy Faeser urged caution for those attending Christmas markets.
However, she said there was no specific threat at the time.
In 2016, a Berlin Christmas market came under attack when a truck plowed through it, killing 13 people, according to The New York Times.
Germany responded by erecting barriers around Christmas markets. It was not clear how the driver in Friday’s attack evaded them.
One man who spoke to the German newspaper Mitteldeutsche Zeitung said the Christmas market turned to “war-like conditions” after the attack, according to the Daily Mail.
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