A car plowed into a busy outdoor Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, killing at least two people and injuring at least 60 others in what authorities suspect was an attack.
The driver of the car was arrested shortly after the car barrelled into the market at around 7 pm, when it was busy with holiday shoppers looking forward to the weekend. The suspect is a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who first came to Germany in 2006, Saxony-Anhalt’s interior minister, Tamara Zieschang, said at a news conference.
“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, told reporters.
Fifteen of the injured were were hurt very seriously, according to government officials and the city government’s website.
Haseloff said the two people who were confirmed to have died were an adult and a toddler, but that he could not rule out further deaths.
“But that is speculation now. Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many,” he said.