At least five people, including a nine-year-old boy, were killed and more than 200 injured after a car plowed into a busy Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg, capital of the central German state of Saxony-Anhalt.
Gov. Reiner Haseloff said Saturday that the preliminary death toll had risen from two to five and that many people were seriously injured.
Authorities described the incident as an intentional attack and announced that the driver had been detained at the scene. An investigation is underway.
Local media reports indicate that the car involved was seen driving at high speeds before hitting the crowd at around 7pm (18:00 GMT) on Friday.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the site on Saturday and expressed his condolences to the families of the victims.
“What a terrible act it is to hurt and kill so many people there with such brutality,” he said. “Almost 40 people are so seriously injured that we must be very worried about them.”
Suspect identified
The Interior Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, Tamara Zieschang, identified the suspect as a 50-year-old man from Saudi Arabia, who arrived in Germany in 2006 and who until then was unknown to the security services.
Haseloff said police believed the suspect acted alone. “As far as we know, there is no further danger to the city,” he told reporters.
Local media said the suspect was Taleb A., a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.
A spokesman for a clinic specializing in rehabilitation for offenders with addictions in Bernburg confirmed that the suspect had worked as a psychiatrist for them, but had not returned to work since October due to illness and vacation.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attack. “The Kingdom affirms its position of rejection of violence and expresses its solidarity and its most sincere condolences to the families of the deceased and to the Federal Republic of Germany,” it said in a statement.
Local media said Taleb’s X account was filled with tweets and retweets focusing on anti-Islamic themes and criticism of religion as he shared congratulatory notes to Muslims who left the faith. He also described himself as a former Muslim.
He appeared in several media interviews in 2019, including with German newspaper FAZ and the BBC, in which he discussed his work as an activist helping Saudis and former Muslims flee to Europe.
He criticized German authorities, saying they had not done enough to combat the “Islamism of Europe.”
He has also expressed support for the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Prominent German terrorism expert Peter Neumann published in X that he had not yet come across any suspect in an act of mass violence with that profile.
“After 25 years in this ‘business’ you think that nothing could surprise you anymore. But a 50-year-old former Saudi Muslim who lives in East Germany, loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards Islamists, that wasn’t really on my radar,” Neumann said.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters: “At this point, we can only say with certainty that the perpetrator was obviously Islamophobic; we can confirm it. Everything else is a matter of further investigation and we have to wait.”
Al Jazeera correspondent Dominic Kane, who was at the scene of the attack, said the Christmas market would have been especially crowded when the car crashed.
“It’s the last Friday before Christmas. “It is tradition throughout Germany that Christmas markets are places where people come, especially on Friday night,” he said.
Kane added that media reports suggested that Saudi authorities had warned their German counterparts about the suspect before the attack.
Police raided his home after the incident looking for explosives or other incriminating material, but found no further evidence. The suspect’s reported use of a rental car could give investigators an avenue to learn more about his actions in the lead-up to the attack.
“Obviously there will be a record of when the car was collected, where it was collected and what documentation was used to obtain the car in the first place. “These are all lines of inquiry,” Kane said.
German political unrest
The attack came at a particularly sensitive time for German politics, as Scholz lost a vote of confidence in parliament earlier this week, prompting a snap federal election scheduled for February 23.
Kane said the incident would likely play into the hands of the anti-immigrant party (AfD), which has gained ground in recent state elections, despite reports that the suspect was among its supporters.
AfD chancellor candidate Alice Weidel and her co-leader Tino Chrupalla issued a statement on Saturday condemning the attack. “The terrible attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market, in the middle of the peaceful pre-Christmas season, has shocked us,” they stated.
The attack also comes eight years after a similar car crash in the German capital Berlin on December 19, 2016.
In that case, a Tunisian suspect, Anis Amri, 24, intentionally drove a truck toward a Christmas market in a major public square, Breitscheidplatz.
Twelve people died and up to 56 were injured in that attack. Amri was eventually killed in a shootout in Milan, after fleeing to Italy.
Raphael Bossong, senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, speculated that the two incidents will likely be considered related, although it is too early to speculate.
“Unfortunately, this is a very sad anniversary, and I am sure that the perpetrator chose this for that purpose, to bring back this memory,” Bossong told Al Jazeera shortly after the news broke.
“We are entering an electoral period and the German debate is already very polarized around these migration issues,” Bossong explained. “I’m sure this will only add fuel to the fire.”
In particular, security arrangements – both in the market and at home – are likely to come under scrutiny.
“All Christmas markets… are supposed to be cordoned off against traffic, in the sense that no car or truck could enter them,” Bossong told Al Jazeera. “The authorities will probably have to do some explaining.”
