Car drives into crowded Christmas market in Germany, killing at least 11
At least eleven people are dead and up to 80 people injured in an attack on a German Christmas market in Magdeburg, Bild newspaper reported Friday, without citing its sources.
A car drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in the eastern German town of Magdeburg, broadcaster MDR and other local media said, citing a local government official.
MDR’s report said the suspected driver of the car had been arrested.
A video published by the newspaper Bild showed people trying to help what appeared to be multiple injured victims at a crowded Christmas market.
“I estimate there are at least 20 ambulances here, a lot of firefighters, and I can see the police helicopter circling in the sky,” an MDR reporter said during a live broadcast, adding that there were a lot of armed police on site.
Eyewitnesses told MDR that the car drove straight into the crowd at the market, in the direction of the town hall.
“This is a terrible event, especially now in the days before Christmas,” head of Saxony-Anhalt state government Reiner Haseloff told MDR, adding that he was on his way to Magdeburg.
German police have arrested a doctor from Saudi Arabia who they believe rammed the car, leaving two people dead and at least 60 injured, the premier of the state of Saxony Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, told n-tv television.
“From what we currently know he was a lone attacker so we don’t think there is any further danger for the city.”
One of those who died was a small child, Haseloff said.
Eight years ago, a truck driven by Anis Amri, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker with extremist links, crashed into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring dozens of others.
US billionaire Elon Musk, set to join President-elect Donald Trump’s administration as an outside adviser, on Friday called on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to resign, responding to reports of the apparent attack.
“Scholz should resign immediately,” Musk posted on X, adding: “Incompetent fool.”
