German Christmas market attack: Ramming car drives into crowd eight years after Berlin tragedy

On December 20, 2024, a car plowed into the Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg, Germany. The exact number of victims is not yet known, but between 60 and 80 people were injured. The Minister-President of Saxony-Anhalt confirmed two deaths. Eight years ago, twelve people were killed in similar circumstances in Berlin. 

A car plowed into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg on Friday, injuring more than 60 people, local authorities said, suspecting a “attack,” just eight years after a similar attack in Berlin.

Man arrested

A suspect was arrested near the market, police later announced. The man is believed to be 50, according to Saxony-Anhalt's prime minister, Reiner Einrich Haselhoff. The man is said to be a psychiatrist from Saudi Arabia who has been in Germany since 2006. According to the Prime Minister, at least two people have died: an adult and a child.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the events in the city left a deep impression on Germany.“predict the worst”. He will travel to Magdeburg this Saturday, December 21, with Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser to take stock of the situation. The German Chancellor could also announce measures, according to Mr. Haselholff, while another Christmas market was closed on Friday evening following the events in Magdeburg.

Between “60 to 80 people” were injured, emergency services in this city of 250,000 inhabitants in northern Germany, capital of the regional state of Saxony-Anhalt, told AFP. In addition to the two dead, the provisional toll given by the municipality indicates that 68 people were affected and 15 seriously injured.

The regional Interior Ministry also indicated to AFP that it was “an attack”.

“This is a terrible event, in the days before Christmas”, declared the Minister-President of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Einrich Haseloff, who described the arrested man as a “lone wolf”. Driving a car, he sped off at high speed and traveled about 400 meters, zigzagging through the crowd, according to the authorities.

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On X, Friday evening, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “deeply shocked”. “I am thinking of the victims, the injured, and their loved ones and families. France shares the pain of the German people and expresses its full solidarity.”

“We are all devastated by the tragedy that took place this evening in Magdeburg. The French are reliving the horror of the terrorist attacks that affected us. Our solidarity is total, this mourning is ours and our will to fight is absolute”, declared French Prime Minister François Bayrou on X.

Call for vigilance

The NTV television channel showed numerous ambulances and fire trucks on the site, injured people being rushed to hospitals and rescue workers setting up aid devices for victims.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had recently called on the population to be vigilant at Christmas markets, without mentioning any specific threats.

Christmas markets are an “ideologically appropriate target for people motivated by Islamism,” intelligence services had recently warned.

Berlin precedent

Germany has experienced a bloody attack in truck attack on a Christmas market in December 2016, claimed by the Islamic State group (IS), which left 12 dead in the center of Berlin and more than 60 injured.

Several attacks or planned attacks with Islamist motivations, and involving foreign nationals, have shocked the country in recent months.

At the end of August, a knife attack committed by a Syrian and claimed by IS left three dead and several injured at a party in Solingen (west).

In June, another knife attack, attributed to an Afghan at an anti-Islam rally in Mannheim, left one dead, a police officer who had intervened.

In September, a 27-year-old Syrian suspected of links to radical Islam was arrested for planning a machete attack targeting German soldiers in a town in Bavaria.

And recently, three young jihadists suspected of preparing an attack were arrested in southwest Germany, the federal prosecutor's office and the police announced on Tuesday.

Among them, two German-Lebanese brothers, aged 15 and 20, are suspected of having “concretely prepared an attack” motivated by a “deep sympathy for the terrorist group Islamic State” (IS), these sources indicate in a press release.

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 in the face of the Islamist threat and the resurgence of anti-Semitism, like many countries in the world.