At a Christmas market in Magdeburg In the early evening a driver drove his car into a crowd. Videos purporting to show the attack are circulating on the Internet. It shows a car plowing through a crowd at high speed. Some people stay on the ground, others manage to jump to the side. Many panicked and ran to safety. A police spokesman said the driver had traveled at least 400 meters. City spokesman Michael Reif is currently assuming an attack. However, the background to the crime is currently unclear. The driver of the vehicle was arrested by police following the incident.

According to Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff (CDU), at least two people were killed and many more injured. The emergency service control center in Magdeburg had previously reported 60 to 80 injured people, several of them seriously. The injured were cared for by rescue workers between the market stalls and in tents set up for this purpose.

The suspected perpetrator is said to be a 50-year-old man who comes from Saudi Arabia. This is what Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff and the Interior Minister of Saxony-Anhalt, Tamara Zieschang, said in Magdeburg.

The man is said to work as a doctor in a company in Bernburg. “He entered Germany in 2006 and is said to have a permanent residence permit,” said Haseloff.

That too is still unclear. Since the attack on the Christmas market at Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz on December 19, 2016, many Christmas markets, especially in larger cities, have been secured with bollards or concrete blocks. At that time, Anis Amri was driving a truck loaded with around 25 tons of structural steel in a crowd of people. 13 people were killed. Amri was initially able to escape, but was arrested during a routine check during his escape police developed in northern Italy. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. On Thursday evening, the victims were commemorated with 13 chimes.

Last year, the Cologne police were able to thwart an attack on a Christmas market in Leverkusen. A 15-year-old teenager also planned to drive a truck into a crowd. Investigators said he wanted to “kill infidels.” In June of this year he was sentenced to four years in juvenile detention.