• At 7 pm on Friday evening, a car drove straight into a Christmas market in the center of Magdeburg in Germany. Pictures show how the place was full of people. The driver is said to have driven 400 meters before he was stopped.
• At least five people were killed and 41 people are seriously injured. One of the dead is a nine-year-old child, a boy named André. His mother writes in one posts on social media: “Why you? I don’t understand it (…) You will always be in our hearts”.
• A total of 205 people were injured and the death toll may rise, according to German police.
The perpetrator
• The driver of the car was arrested by police nearby. The suspect is a 50-year-old man who came to Germany from Saudi Arabia in 2006. An initial test showed that he was under the influence of drugs at the time, according to Photo.
• According to the prosecutor, the suspect has expressed dissatisfaction with the way Saudi refugees are treated in Germany.
• A Saudi source states for Reuters that the country warned Germany about the man, because he expressed extreme views on X. A spokesperson for the police states that the police have no information about any warning and are working to verify the information.
• Several German media link an X account to the suspect. It states, among other things, that “Germany wants to Islamize Europe”. Die Welt writes that the suspect applied for asylum as he was worried about persecution in his home country because of his criticism of Islam.
• The prosecutor is preparing an indictment against the suspect for five murders and 205 attempted murders.
The reactions
• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz calls the attack horrific and said at a press conference that authorities must now “turn over every stone” in the investigation. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser calls the suspect “Islamophobic”, according to Reuters.
• The leader of the Alternative for Germany (AFD), Alice Weidel, writes on X that she is thinking of the victims. “When will this madness end?”, she writes further.
• The police have now strengthened their presence at Christmas markets in the country, writes the TV channel MDR. There were concrete bollards around the market, but the perpetrator was able to drive in anyway.