The deputy mayor of the German city of Magdeburg said Friday that at least one person was killed and dozens were injured after a car plowed into a busy Christmas market. Authorities believe this was an attack.
Regina-Dolores Stieler-Hinz said more than 50 people were injured, the dpa reported.
The driver of the car was arrested, the dpa reported, citing unknown government representatives from the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
Government spokesman Matthias Schuppe and city spokesman Michael Reif said they suspected it was an intentional act.
“The pictures are terrible,” he said. “According to my information, a car drove into the visitors to the Christmas market, but from which direction and how far I can’t say yet.”
Magdeburg University Hospital said it was caring for 10 to 20 patients but was preparing for more, dpa reported.
The siren sounds from first responders clashed with the market’s Christmas decorations, including ornaments, stars and leaf garlands that adorned vendors’ stands.
Crime scene footage of a cordoned off part of the market showed debris on the ground.
“This is a terrible event, especially now in the run-up to Christmas,” said Saxony-Anhalt’s Governor Reiner Haseloff.
Haseloff told the dpa that he was on the way to Magdeburg, but was initially unable to provide any information about the victims or the background to the incident.
Chancellor OIaf Scholz posted on X: “My thoughts are with the victims and their families. We stand by their side and by the people of Magdeburg.”
Magdeburg, located west of Berlin, is the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt and has around 240,000 inhabitants.
The alleged attack occurred eight years after an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin. On December 19, 2016, an Islamic extremist plowed a truck through a crowded Christmas festival, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
Christmas markets are an important part of German culture as an annual holiday tradition that has been valued since the Middle Ages and successfully exported to much of the Western world.
In Berlin alone, more than 100 markets opened at the end of last month, bringing the smell of mulled wine, roasted almonds and bratwurst to the capital. Other markets abound throughout the country.
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.
