LAST UPDATE | 21 Dec
A NINE-YEAR-OLD child was among five people killed in a car-ramming attack at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, a city official has said.
More than 200 people were injured in the incident with 41 sustaining either serious or critical injuries.
Police arrested a 50-year-old Saudi doctor of psychiatry at the scene where the car ploughed through the festive crowd on Friday night.
The suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, is considered to hold “Islamophobic” views, the German interior minister Nancy Faeser said.
She said that while she did not want to speculate about the motive, “the one thing” she could confirm was that he had expressed an “Islamophobic” stance.
A prosecutor said that “the background to the crime… could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany”.
Taha Al-Hajji of the Berlin-based European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights told AFP Abdulmohsen was “a psychologically disturbed person with an exaggerated sense of self-importance”.
A sombre Chancellor Scholz, dressed in black, was joined by national and regional politicians and a security detail in the eastern city of Magdeburg, where they laid flowers outside the main church.
He pledged that Germany would respond “with the full force of the law” over “the terrible attack that injured and killed so many people” close to the anniversary of a deadly 2016 jihadist attack on a Berlin Christmas market.
Scholz also made a call for national unity at a time when Germany has been rocked by a heated debate on immigration and security as it heads towards elections in February.
The chancellor said it was important “that we stay together as a country, that we stick together, that we link arms, that it is not hatred that determines our coexistence but the fact that we are a community that seeks a common future.”
He said he was grateful for expressions of “solidarity … from many, many countries around the world” and said “it is good to hear that we as Germans are not alone in the face of this terrible catastrophe”.
Taoiseach Simon Harris called it a “shocking and despicable” situation.
“Thinking of and praying for the victims and their families and all those involved in responding to the situation,” Harris wrote on social media, adding:: “Families and friends spending time today this Christmas season at markets when this brutal act took place.”
Tánaiste Micheál Martin has said that he is “shocked and appalled by reports of the loss of life and injuries at the Christmas Market in Magdeburg”.
“My thoughts and prayers go to the victims, their families, emergency services and the German people,” he said.
Martin advised any Irish citizens in the area to follow the advice of local authorities.
NTV television showed multiple ambulances and fire engines at the chaotic site with injured people being rushed off to hospitals and others being treated as they lay on the ground.
“We presume it was an attack,” a spokeswoman for the interior ministry of Saxony-Anhalt state told AFP in the immediate wake of incident.
Saxony-Anhalt governor Reiner Haseloff has said last night: “We have arrested the perpetrator. It is a man from Saudi Arabia… a doctor who has been in Germany since 2006.”
“From what we currently know he was a lone attacker so we don’t think there is any further danger for the city,” Haseloff said, speaking to reporters at the scene.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on X that “the reports from Magdeburg raise the worst fears”.
“My thoughts are with the victims and their families. We stand by their side and by the side of the people of Magdeburg. My thanks go to the dedicated rescue workers in these anxious hours.”
Scholz along with other German politicians is to visit the scene of the attack later this morning.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier wrote that “the anticipation of a peaceful Christmas was suddenly interrupted” but cautioned that “the background to the terrible deed has yet been clarified”, while Saxony-Anhalt governor Reiner Haseloff also condemned the attack.
“[It is] a terrible event, particularly now in the days before Christmas”.
Includes reporting by Press Association
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