German police search for motive in Christmas market attack that killed five, injured hundreds

FRANCE 24

21 December 2024 at 5:52 am·1-min read

German officials hunted for clues on Saturday after a 50-year-old Saudi national with a history of anti-Islamic comments drove his car into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing five people, including a small child, and injuring more than 200 others.

Germans mourned a violent attack and their shaken sense of security after an SUV ploughed through a Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg on Friday night, in a deadly car-ramming that evoked painful memories of past attacks on a centuries-old tradition.

Reiner Haseloff, the governor of Saxony-Anhalt, said Saturday the death toll had risen to five, with more than 200 others injured, many of them seriously.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old Saudi man at the site of the attack and took him into custody for questioning. Officials said he had lived in Germany for nearly two decades, practising medicine.

German media outlets identified the man as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

There were still no answers Saturday as to what caused him to drive into a crowd in the central German city famed for its Christmas market.

Addressing reporters in Magdeburg, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said she did not want to speculate about the motive, adding that "the one thing" she could confirm was that the suspect had expressed an "Islamophobic" stance.

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