Nine-year-old among five killed in Germany Christmas market attack

A nine-year-old was among the five people killed when a Saudi doctor drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers in the German city of Magdeburg, an official has said.

City official Ronni Krug said he did not have further information on the adults who were killed. He said 200 people were injured, of whom 41 are in a serious or very serious condition.

Prosecutor Horst Nopens said the suspect, a 50-year-old, is under investigation on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and bodily harm. He was arrested on Friday night and is currently being questioned.

He has lived in Germany since 2006, practising medicine in Bernburg, about 25 miles south of Magdeburg, officials said.

“There is no more peaceful and cheerful place than a Christmas market,” Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz said. “What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality.”

Several German media outlets identified the man as Taleb A, withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang the hymn Amazing Grace, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

There were still no answers on Saturday as to what motivated the man to drive his black BMW into a crowd in the eastern German city.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, he shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticising the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the “Islamism of Europe”.

Mr Nopens, the prosecutor, said the motive may have been “dissatisfaction with the treatment of Saudi refugees in Germany” but investigators are still trying to get to the bottom of what was behind the attack.

“He has at least talked about the motive,” Mr Nopens said. “And we have to clear up how much of that is true.”

Investigators have to analyze computers, mobile devices and other evidence, “and at the end of the day we will know, or at least hope to know, what drove him to this act.”

“We have talked about an attack,” he said. “Whether it was a terror attack, we don’t know yet.”

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that is part of a centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Those attacks have led cities to beef up security at Christmas markets and other events.

On Friday the suspect used a special escape and rescue route to enter the market, according to Tom-Oliver Langhans, director of the Magdeburg police.

Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 people, west of Berlin, that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Mr Scholz and interior minister Nancy Faeser travelled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Ms Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

The market itself was still cordoned off on Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 metres. Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market. Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.

Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.