Death Toll Rises to 5, Including 9-Year-Old, After Man Drives Car into Hundreds of Christmas Market Shoppers.

The death toll from the attack in Germany – where a man drove cars at high speed during a Christmas market – has risen to five people, including a 9-year-old child, since Saturday, December 21.

On Friday, December 20, a man drove into a holiday market in Magdeburg, Germany, west of Berlin, in what officials are calling a “horrific” incident that led to one death, multiple serious accidents and an arrest at gunpoint, according to ABC News and NBC News.

Officials have called the incident a terrorist attack, with pictures from the market showing many people on the ground as emergency services arrived at the scene.

Authorities have since announced that they have arrested the suspect, a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia who has lived in Germany since 2006, according to the Associated Press. Reiner Haseloff, the state premier of Saxony-Anhalt, told reporters that the suspect acted alone and there was no ongoing threat to the public, according to NBC News, which reported that the car reportedly drove about 1,200 meters down a busy street. .

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said 40 of the 200 people injured were “so badly injured that we should be very concerned” about them, according to the AP. “There is no place more peaceful and joyful than a Christmas market,” Scholz said. “What a terrible act to injure and kill so many people with such brutality.”

Per CNN, the Christmas market has 140 market stalls, an ice skating rink, a ferris wheel and more, as it was scheduled to open from Nov. 22 to Dec. 29.

Horst Walter Nopens, the lead prosecutor at the Magdeburg Prosecutor’s Office, said on Saturday that the victims included a 9-year-old child. He added that the suspect faces “five counts of murder and 200 counts of attempted murder and aggravated assault,” according to CNN.

About 80 patients were brought to Magdeburg’s university hospital Friday night, neurosurgeon Mahmoud Elenbaby told the AP, adding that “many are still very ill, and some are in critical condition.”

In a statement on social media, the police department of Magdeburg Saxony-Anhalt wrote to X that the authorities “continue to request the submission of witness reports, photos and videos of the events that took place at the Magdeburg Christmas market”.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters that the suspect was “obviously Islamophobic,” according to NBC News. AP reported that the man identified himself on social media as a former Muslim and criticized Islam on X (formerly Twitter). Citing local outlets, AP reported that the suspect has been identified only as Taleb A. (his last name withheld due to local privacy laws).

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs shared X’s “solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims.”

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Thi Linh Chi Nguyen – who worked near the market at a hair salon – told the AP that she saw a car speeding through the market, and a child being thrown into the air, before police stopped the suspect on a nearby train. Wait.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t cover the injured. And it was very cold,” he said.

Bystander footage from the German news agency dpa, as well as the AP, showed police holding the suspect at gunpoint. When one policeman pointed a gun at the suspect, many cars arrived at the scene and other policemen surrounded him.

“For me it is important that when such a terrible incident, such a terrible incident, a terrible attack in which many people were injured and killed, almost on the anniversary of the terrorist attack on Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, that as a country we stay together and stick together. ,” Scholz told reporters, via CNN, referring to the 2016 attack on a Christmas market in Berlin.

A memorial service will be held at Magdeburg Cathedral at 7pm local time on Saturday, as crowds of people have already paid their respects outside the church.

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