Germany: Car drives into Christmas market

BERLIN –

A car drove into people at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday. Officials said they suspected it was an attack and that people were injured, but it was not immediately clear how many were harmed.

The driver of the car was arrested, German news agency dpa reported, citing unidentified government officials in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. Regional government spokesperson Matthias Schuppe and city spokesperson Michael Reif said they suspected it was a deliberate act.

Reif said there were “numerous injured” but didn’t give a precise figure.

“The pictures are terrible,” he said. “My information is that a car drove into the Christmas market visitors, but I can’t yet say from what direction and how far.”

Footage from the scene of a cordoned-off part of the market showed debris on the ground.

“This is a terrible event, particularly now in the days before Christmas,” Saxony-Anhalt governor Reiner Haseloff said. Haseloff told dpa that he was on his way to Magdeburg but couldn’t immediately give any information on victims or what was behind the incident.

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

The suspected attack came a day after the eight anniversary of an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin. On Dec. 19, 2016, an Islamic extremist attacker plowed through a crowd of Christmas market-goers with a truck, leaving 13 people dead and injuring dozens more. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had said late last month that there were no concrete indications of a danger to Christmas markets this year, but that it was wise to be vigilant.