On December 20, 2024, a car plowed into a crowd at a Christmas market in Germany, killing two people and injuring more than 60.
A car plowed into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg on Friday night, killing two people instead of ten as previously reported, and injuring more than 60, in a suspected attack whose suspect of Saudi origin has been arrested.
The attack comes eight years after a similar act at a Christmas market in Berlin, while Germany is in the midst of an election campaign and is on high alert for the risk of attacks.
For the head of government of the Magdeburg region, Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, this is not a coincidence but a “temporal synchronization” desired for “political” reasons.
Who is the attacker? ?
The alleged perpetrator is a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia and arrived in Germany in 2006. He worked in the Saxony-Anhalt region, of which Magdeburg, 160 kilometers from Berlin, is the regional capital.
This man, presented in the media as Taleb A., and practicing, “acted alone”, according to Reiner Haseloff.
His motives remain unclear because he was not known to the police as an Islamist and, according to German media, had even published opinions on social networks denouncing the dangers of Islamization.
A child and an adult killed
The car drove into the crowd “for at least 400 meters through the Christmas market”, a spokesperson for the Magdeburg police.
The two dead are a child and an adult. According to a provisional report from the municipality, 68 people were injured, 15 of them seriously.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000The attacker was driving a black SUV that crashed through security barriers and then zigzagged through the market grounds, according to reports from visitors to the local news website Volksstimme.
Nadine, 32, was at the market with her friend Marco when the attack took place. “He was hit and carried away, it was horrible, he didn't even scream”, she told the daily Bild.
Saudi Arabia has “condemned” the attack and expressed “its solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims” as well as its “rejection of violence”.
The far right reacts
According to AFP journalists at Magdeburg, numerous ambulances and fire trucks are on site in a constant coming and going of emergency vehicles transporting injured people.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz plans to visit the country on Saturday. In the meantime, the far right has reacted quickly, in Germany and abroad, where the debate is lively on security and the reception of immigrants.
“When will this madness end?”, wrote on the X network the co-president of the AfD Alice Weidel, whose party is credited with second place in the legislative elections to be held on February 23.
“The target of the attack is not random: radical Islam is waging war on our Christian traditions, our identities, our civilization”, reacted in France the president of the National Rally Jordan Bardella.
Christmas markets are an “ideologically appropriate target for those motivated by Islamism”, had warned German intelligence services before the holiday season.
Previous from Berlin
Germany experienced a bloody truck attack on a Christmas market in December 2016, claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group, which left 12 dead in the center of Berlin and more than 60 injured.
Several Islamist-motivated attacks or planned attacks involving foreign nationals have shaken the country in recent months.
In late August, a knife attack committed by a Syrian and claimed by IS left three dead and several injured during at a party in Solingen (west).
In June, another knife attack, attributed to an Afghan during an anti-Islam rally in Mannheim, left one person dead, a police officer who had intervened.
In early September, German police shot dead a young Austrian known for his links to radical Islam as he was preparing to commit an attack on the Israeli consulate general in Munich.
Since the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip, the German authorities have increased their vigilance against the Islamist threat and the resurgence of anti-Semitism, like many countries in the world. world.