infinity games Germany: 2 Dead, 60 Injured After Car Rams Into Crowded Christmas Market In Magdeburg; Driver Arrested

Emergency services work in a cordoned-off area near a Christmas Market, after an incident in Magdeburg, Germany, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024.AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi Emergency services work in a cordoned-off area near a Christmas Market, after an incident in Magdeburg, Germany, Friday, Dec. 20, 2024.AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi

A car drove into a crowded Christmas market in Germany's Magdeburg city on Friday in a suspected deliberate attack leading to the death of two people and injuring at least 60 others. The driver was arrested soon after the incident in the accident spot.

Among the dead was also a toddler along with an adult and the officials told Associated Press that the death toll may rise as 15 other victims got seriously injured.

The incident took place around 7 pm in the evening when the market was full of shoppers ahead of the last weekend before the grand festival of Christmas.

Who Was The Driver?

Several bystanders captured videos of the driver being arrested in the middle of a walkway as the police officers pointed a gun and shouted at him as he laid on the ground.

The other police officers took him into custody later.

The suspect was identified as a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who moved to Germany in 2006 named Tamara Zieschang.

The interior minister for the state of Saxony-Anhalt said at a news conference that the driver has been practising medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Magdeburg.

"As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know, there is no further danger to the city," Saxony-Anhalt's governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters.

"Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many," he added.

The violence occurred in Magdeburg, a city of about 240,000 people west of Berlin that serves as Saxony-Anhalt's capital. Friday's attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Christmas markets are a huge part of German culture as an annual holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages and successfully exported to much of the Western world.

In Berlin alone, more than 100 markets opened late last month and brought the smells of mulled wine, roasted almonds and bratwurst to the capital. Other markets abound across the country.

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The violence shocked the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that is part of a centuries-old German tradition.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser 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.

Magdeburg resident Dorin Steffen told German news agency dpa that she was at a concert in a nearby church when she heard the sirens. The cacophony was so loud "you had to assume that something terrible had happened".

She called the attack "a dark day" for the city.

"We are shaking," Steffen said. "Full of sympathy for the relatives, also in the hope that nothing has happened to our relatives, friends and acquaintances."

The attack reverberated far beyond Magdeburg, with Haseloff calling it a catastrophe for the city, state and country. He said flags would be lowered to half-staff in Saxony-Anhalt and that the federal government planned to do the same.

"It is really one of the worst things one can imagine, particularly in connection with what a Christmas market should bring," the governor said.

Chancellor OIaf Scholz posted on X: "My thoughts are with the victims and their relatives. We stand beside them and beside the people of Magdeburg."

NATO's secretary-general and the European Commission's president also expressed their condolences on X.

Magdeburg Mayor Simone Borris, who was on the verge of tears, said officials plan to arrange a memorial at the city's cathedral on Saturday.

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