MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Five people were killed, including a 9-year-old, after a Saudi doctor drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers in the German city of Magdeburg, officials said Saturday, as people mourned the victims and their shaken sense of security.
City official Ronni Krug didn’t provide further information on the adults killed in the attack on Friday night. He said 200 people were injured, of whom 41 were in serious or very serious condition.
Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam — whose salon is located in a mall across the Christmas market — was on the phone during a break when said she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed, as people screamed and a child was thrown into the air.
The woman recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.
The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters. Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market. Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.
Prosecutors said the suspect, a 50-year-old Saudi doctor, is under investigation on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and bodily harm.
Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws. They reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has lived in Germany since 2006, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg, officials said.
Taleb’s X account describes him as a former Muslim. It’s filled with tweets and retweets focusing on anti-Islam themes and criticism of the religion, while sharing congratulatory notes to Muslims who left the faith. He was critical of German authorities, saying they had failed to do enough to combat the “Islamism of Europe.” He has also voiced support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Some described Taleb as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. Recently, he seemed focused on his theory that German authorities have been targeting Saudi asylum-seekers.
But there were still no direct answers Saturday as to what motivated Taleb to drive his black BMW into a crowd in the eastern German city.
Prosecutors said the motive may have been “dissatisfaction with the treatment of Saudi refugees in Germany,” but investigators are still trying to get to the bottom of what was behind the attack.
Investigators have to analyze computers, mobile devices and other evidence, “and at the end of the day we will know, or at least hope to know, what drove him to this act.”
The violence shocked Germany and the city, prompting several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution, and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased its police presence at them.
Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August. Those attacks have led cities to beef up security at Christmas markets and other events.
Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and wounding many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.