Driver kills at least two after ramming into crowd at Christmas market in central Germany

A driver rammed a car into a large crowd of revellers at a Christmas market in central Germany on Friday evening, killing at least two people and injuring more than 60 before he was arrested, authorities said.

One of the dead was a young child, said Reiner Haseloff, premier of the state of Saxony-Anhalt. The incident took place in Magdeburg, the state capital, 150 km (90 miles) west of Berlin.

"It is a catastrophe for the city of Magdeburg, for the state and for Germany in general," Haseloff said, adding that the death toll could rise given the severity of some of the injuries.

Haseloff described the attacker as a 50-year-old male doctor from Saudi Arabia with permanent residency in Germany, where he had lived for almost two decades.

"As things stand at the moment, we are talking about a lone offender, which means that there is no further danger to the city because we were able to arrest him."

The motive was unclear. The suspect was not known to German authorities as an Islamist, according to local broadcaster MDR.

A Saudi source told Reuters the kingdom had warned German authorities about the attacker, who the source said had posted extremist views on his personal X account.

The source identified the suspect as Taleb Abdul Jawad. Germany's Der Spiegel identified the attacker as Taleb A., a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy who sympathised with Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party. The magazine did not say where it got the information.

Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry condemned the attack.

Following the incident, police cleared an area surrounding the vehicle to investigate a possible explosive device, local broadcaster MDR reported. It later cited police as saying that no such device had been found.

A police operation was also under way in the town of Bernburg, south of Magdeburg, where the suspect is believed to have lived, local newspaper Mitteldeutsche Zeitung reported.

Police were not immediately available to comment on the reports of a suspicious item or the operation in Bernburg.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who sent his thoughts to those affected in a post on social media platform X, is expected to visit the scene on Saturday with Interior Minister Nancy Faeser.

Reuters