At least one person was killed and several others injured on Friday after a car plowed into a crowd at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg in what local officials are calling a terrorist attack.

The number of victims was initially not clear.

According to eyewitnesses quoted by the broadcaster, a car apparently drove directly into the crowd of people at the Christmas market in the direction of the town hall.

The driver of the car was arrested, the dpa reported, citing unknown government representatives from the state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Numerous police and rescue workers were on site, and the head of the Christmas market asked people to leave the city center, according to broadcaster MDR.

“Especially now in the run-up to Christmas, this is a terrible event,” said Saxony-Anhalt’s state governor Reiner Haseloff.

Magdeburg, located west of Berlin, is the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt and has around 240,000 inhabitants.

On December 19, 2016, an Islamist extremist attacker drove a truck into a crowd of Christmas market-goers in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said late last month that there was no concrete evidence of a threat to Christmas markets this year but that it was advisable to be vigilant.

More details coming soon…