A car rammed through a crowd of people on Friday at a Christmas market in Germany - leaving multiple people dead and up to 80 injured, reports suggest. The vehicle plowed meters through a market in the city of Magdeburg, about 95 miles west of Berlin. The driver is understood to have been arrested and police are investigating whether or not explosives may been in the vehicle. German media reports that 11 people have been killed though officials confirmed the two people who have died were an adult and a toddler.
The suspect is a year-old Saudi doctor who moved to Germany in , Tamara Zieschang, the interior minister for the state of Saxony-Anhalt, said at a news conference.
He has been practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 23 miles 36 kilometers south of Magdeburg, she said. The suspected attack in Magdeburg, a city of about , people west of Berlin that Saxony-Anhalt's capital, came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into 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 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. 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.
The attack reverberated beyond Magdeburg. Magdeburg resident Dorin Steffen told German news agency dpa that she was at a concert in a nearby church when she heard the sirens. Royals Health Weird News Science. Entertainment Celebrity News TV. Movies Music.
