A car plowed into a crowd of people shopping at a busy Christmas market in eastern Germany Friday — killing at least two, including a small child, in what officials are saying was a terrorist attack by a Saudi doctor.
Horrifying video showed the driver ripping through the narrow pathways between the outdoor shopping village stalls shortly after 7 p.m. local time in the city of Magdeburg, where hundreds of people were gathered. The driver was immediately arrested after carrying out what authorities are calling a terror attack, German news agency dpa reported. The suspect is a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who first came to Germany in 2006, Saxony-Anhalt’s interior minister, Tamara Zieschang said.
He had been practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 23 miles south of Magdeburg.
“As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city,” Saxony-Anhalt’s governor, Reiner Haseloff, also told reporters.
The suspect — who has not yet been identified — was not previously on law enforcement’s radar as a known Islamist, security sources told dpa.
Officials confirmed that two people were killed: one adult and one small child. Investigators expect the casualties to continue to climb. Sixty-eight others were injured in the mayhem, including 15 who were hurt very seriously. Another 37 people had injuries of medium severity and 16 were lightly injured.
Authorities are investigating the incident as a suspected targeted attack, according to regional government spokesperson Matthias Schuppe and city spokesperson Michael Reif. || Posted by CZ