One dead, 50 injured after driver plows car into crowd at Christmas market in Germany

The deputy mayor of the German city of Magdeburg said Friday that at least one person was killed and dozens were injured after a driver plowed a car into a group of people at a busy Christmas market. Authorities believe this was an attack.

Regina-Dolores Stieler-Hinz said more than 50 people were injured, the dpa reported.

According to authorities, the driver of the car was arrested.

Government spokesman Matthias Schuppe and city spokesman Michael Reif said they suspected it was an attack.

“The pictures are terrible,” said Reif. “According to my information, a car drove into the Christmas market visitors, but I can’t say from which direction and how far.”

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Crime scene footage of a cordoned off part of the market showed debris on the ground.

“Especially now in the run-up to Christmas, this is a terrible event,” said Saxony-Anhalt’s state governor Reiner Haseloff.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz posted on

Magdeburg, located west of Berlin, is the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt and has around 240,000 inhabitants.

The alleged attack occurred a day after the eighth anniversary of an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin. On December 19, 2016, an Islamist extremist attacker drove a truck through a crowd of Christmas market visitors, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said late last month that there was no concrete evidence of a threat to Christmas markets this year but that it was advisable to be vigilant.

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This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.