MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) 鈥� Germans on Saturday mourned the victims of an apparent attack in which authorities say a doctor , killing five people, injuring 200 others and shaking the public鈥檚 sense of security at what would otherwise be a time of joy.
The alleged attack Friday evening in Magdeburg, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Berlin, killed a 9-year-old and four adults and injured 41 people badly enough that authorities warned the death toll could rise.
Magdeburg marked the tragedy Saturday with the tolling church bells at 7:04 p.m., the exact time of the attack in the city of roughly 240,000 people.
The driver, a 50-year-old doctor who immigrated from Saudi Arabia in 2006, surrendered to police at the scene. He鈥檚 being investigated for five counts of suspected murder and 205 counts of suspected attempted murder, prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens said at a news conference.
Among other things, investigators are looking into whether the attack could have been motivated by the suspect鈥檚 dissatisfaction with the way Germany treats Saudi refugees, Nopens said.
鈥淭here is no more peaceful and cheerful place than a Christmas market,鈥� Chancellor Olaf Scholz said. 鈥淲hat a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality.鈥�
More on the suspect police arrested
Although Nopens mentioned the treatment of Saudi immigrants angle, authorities said Saturday that they still didn't know why the suspect drove his black BMW into the crowded market.
Police but several German news outlets identified him as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.
Describing himself as a former Muslim, appears to have been an active user of the social media platform X, sharing dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who had left the faith.
He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he referred to as the 鈥淚slamification of Europe.鈥�
Magdeburg is shaken
The violence shocked Germany and Magdeburg, which is the capital of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring the . It led several other communities to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg鈥檚 loss. Berlin kept its many markets open but increased its police presence at them.
Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.
Friday鈥檚 attack came after an Islamic extremist in Berlin, and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg, where a memorial service took place Saturday. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.
Although many people went to the site with candles to mourn the victims, several hundred far-right protesters gathered in a central square in Magdeburg with a banner that read 鈥渞emigration,鈥� German news agency dpa reported.
A witness recounts the horrifying attack
Verified by dpa showed the suspect鈥檚 arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.
Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs that she thought were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.
Shaking as she described what she had witnessed, she 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 number of injured people was overwhelming.
鈥淢y husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn鈥檛 have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold," she said.
The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red and white tape and police vans, as armed officers guarded at every entrance. Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.
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Moulson reported from Berlin and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.
Kirsten Grieshaber, Geir Moulson And Vanessa Gera, The Associated Press
