2 killed, 68 injured as car runs into crowd at Christmas market

Many were injured and at least two people, including a small child killed on Friday after a car ran into a crowd at a Christmas market in Germany.

The incident which has been described as a terror attack happened in the eastern German town of Magdeburg.

At least 68 other people were injured, including 15 who were left in a critical state, according to the city government.

Reports say a black BMW drove straight into the crowd at the Christmas market, travelling at speed for 400 metres in the direction of the town hall.

Videos posted on social media showed a dark-coloured car driving into the crowds at high speed. Several media outlets showed the videos in their coverage, but the authenticity of the footage has yet to be officially confirmed.

Emergency workers were seen treating victims on the ground at the market, surrounded by blood. Makeshift tents were erected at the site. Witnesses reported hearing cries and screams. The operator of a food stall on the market described the scenes as “reminiscent of a war”.

“This is a terrible event, particularly now in the days before Christmas,” Saxony-Anhalt’s leader Reiner Haseloff, who was on his way to Magdeburg, said.

The driver of the car was immediately arrested, and later identified as Taleb A., a 50-year-old medical doctor from Saudi Arabia. Haseloff said the man had been living in Germany since 2006. The suspect, a consultant for psychiatry and psychotherapy, was recognised as a refugee in 2016.

Footage from the scene showed the alleged perpetrator lying on the ground, his head raised, next to a badly damaged black car. A policeman metres from him is pointing a drawn weapon in his direction as passersby look on in shock.

“As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city,” Haseloff said.

The suspect rented the car shortly before the attack, according to reports citing a security source, and was not known to authorities as having an Islamist background.

A woman who spoke to the regional newspaper, the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung said that the perpetrator had “driven deliberately into the section of the Christmas market decked out with scenes from fairytales”, where a lot of families with young children were gathered. She told the paper she had just managed to fling herself and her child out of the path of the vehicle.

After the incident, police cleared an area surrounding the vehicle to investigate a possible explosive device, local broadcaster MDR reported. It later cited police as saying that no such device had been found.

A police operation was also under way in the town of Bernburg, south of Magdeburg, where the suspect is believed to have lived, local newspaper Mitteldeutsche Zeitung reported.

Police were not immediately available to comment on the reports of a suspicious item or the operation in Bernburg.