A nine-year-old child is among the five people killed in the car-ramming attack at a Christmas market in the central German city of Magdeburg, prosecutors said during a press conference on Saturday afternoon.
The other four victims are adults, said Horst Walter Nopens, the head of the local public prosecutor’s office.
Another 200 people were injured, many of them seriously, when a man ploughed a car through the crowd at the Christmas market on Friday evening, he said.
According to the director of the Magdeburg police department, Tom-Oliver Langhans, the man used an escape and rescue route to reach the central square, with the whole incident lasting about three minutes.
The suspect, who has been identified as Taleb A according to German privacy laws, was arrested at the scene and is being interrogated in police custody, Nopens said.
He is being investigated on five counts of murder and 200 counts of attempted murder with grievous bodily harm, Nopens said.
According to the current state of the investigations, the suspect was a lone perpetrator, police said.
City defends security concept
The emergency route said to have been used by the suspect to reach the Christmas market was not protected by barriers, according to the city administration.
The route had been designed to allow rescue services to access the square in the event of an emergency, said city official Ronni Krug during the press conference.
However, police forces were stationed as the incident unfolded on Friday evening, meaning the entrance had not been left unprotected, he added, defending the security concept in place at the market which he said had “proven itself over many years.”
The security concept had been repeatedly adapted and created “to the best of our knowledge” and was last tightened in November, Krug said.
Suspect is Islam-critical activist
Taleb A is a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia, known as an Islam-critical activist. He has made erratic accusations on social media and in interviews, claiming German authorities are not doing enough to combat Islamism.
Previously an advocate for Saudi women fleeing their country, he later advised against seeking asylum in Germany, writing on his website in English and Arabic: “My advice: don’t ask for asylum in Germany.”
The motive for the crime is still unclear, but the suspect may have been unhappy with the treatment of Saudi refugees in Germany, Nopens said.
Taleb A arrived in Germany in 2006. Dpa has learned that he applied for asylum in February 2016 and was granted political refugee status in July of that year.
According to a spokeswoman for health company Salus, the suspect worked as a specialist in psychiatry in the forensic psychiatric ward in Bernburg, a town south of Magdeburg.
Saudi Arabia warned Germany about suspect
Saudi Arabian security sources said they had warned Germany about the suspected attacker.
Riyadh had requested the extradition of the suspect, but Germany had not responded, they said.
They said the man was a Shiite Muslim who comes from the city of Al-Hofuf in eastern Saudi Arabia. Shiites are a minority in the country, making up only around 10% in the majority Sunni nation.
There are repeated reports of discrimination against Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia.
German politicians to attend memorial service
Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other top officials, including Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and Justice Minister Volker Wissing, were in Magdeburg on Saturday, visiting the scene of the tragic event.
Scholz called the incident a “terrible, insane act.”
“There is no place more peaceful and joyful than a Christmas market,” Scholz said. “It is a horrific act to harm and kill so many people with such brutality in such a place.”
He called for a comprehensive investigation, saying the perpetrator, his actions and motives must be understood in detail and the appropriate criminal charges must be brought.
Scholz also called for social cohesion, saying it was important to him “that we as a country stay together, that we stick together, and that we hook under each other, that hatred does not determine our togetherness.”
Those who sow hatred must not be allowed to get away with it, he said.
Saxony-Anhalt state premier Reiner Haseloff said the site would “always remain associated with the history of the city of Magdeburg,” as he visited the scene.
A memorial service is to be held in Magdeburg’s cathedral at 7 pm (1800 GMT), with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier due to attend.
Magdeburg is a city of some 237,000 people in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, some 150 kilometres west of Berlin.
Police in other cities with Christmas markets are now on high alert.
In Stuttgart, a police spokesperson said that police forces on the ground had been made aware of the situation. In Berlin, a spokesperson said that there would be an increased police presence at Christmas markets.
Security forces stand guard at the entrance of Magdeburg’s Christmas market. Authorities report that at least two people, including a small child, were killed, and over 60 others injured in the incident, which occurred on Friday evening in the heart of the central German city. Hendrik Schmidt/dpa