MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) – Five people were killed, including a 9-year-old child, after a Saudi doctor entered a Christmas market holiday shoppers in the German city of Magdeburg, officials said Saturday, as people mourned the victims and a shaken sense of security.
City official Ronni Krug did not provide further information about the adults killed in the Friday night attack. He said 200 people were injured, with 41 in serious or critical condition.
How did the attack appear?
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Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam – whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market – was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought it was pranks. They were fire. She then saw a car driving through the market at high speed. People were screaming and a child was thrown into the air by the car.
The woman recalled seeing the car burst out of the market and turn right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee and then come to a stop at the tram stop where the person went arrested the suspect.
The market itself was still cordoned off on Saturday with red and white tape and police vans every 50 meters (yards). Police with machine guns guarded all entrances to the market. Some thermal security blankets are still lying on the street.
Who is the man behind the attack?
Prosecutors said the suspect a 50-year-old Saudi doctorunder investigation on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and bodily harm.
Several German media identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in accordance with privacy laws, and reported that he was an expert in psychiatry and psychotherapy. He has stayed there Germany since 2006, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.
Taleb's X account states that he was formerly a Muslim. It is full of tweets and retweets focusing on anti-Islam themes and criticism of the religion, while also sharing congratulatory notes to Muslims who have left the faith. He criticized the German authorities, saying they had not done enough to fight “European Islamism”. He has also shown support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Some described Taleb as an activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. Recently, he seemed to focus on his theory that German authorities have been targeting Saudi asylum seekers.
The reasons behind the attack
There were still no answers on Saturday about what prompted the man to drive his black BMW
Prosecutors said the motive may have been “dissatisfaction with the treatment of Saudi refugees in Germany”, but investigators are still trying to get to the bottom of what was behind the attack.
Investigators have to examine computers, mobile devices and other evidence, “and at the end of the day we will know, or at least hope to know, what prompted this action.” “
A series of violence
The violence shocked Germany and the city, prompting several other German cities to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution, and out of solidarity with the loss of Magdeburg. Berlin kept its markets open but has increased the police presence in them.
Germany has suffered a series of counter-attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and injured eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August. These attacks have forced cities to increase security at Christmas markets and other events.
An attack came on Friday eight years after the An Islamic terrorist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and hurt many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
