Two dead, 60 hurt after car plows into crowd at Christmas market in Germany

globalnews.ca:

Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, killing at least two people and injuring at least 60 others in what authorities called a deliberate attack.The driver was arrested at the scene shortly after the car barreled into the market at around 7 p.m., when it was teeming with holiday shoppers looking forward to the weekend.Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest on a walkway in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone.

Other officers soon arrived to take the man into custody.The two people confirmed dead were an adult and a toddler, but officials said additional deaths couldn’t be ruled out because 15 people had been seriously injured.The violence shocked the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition.The suspect is a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who moved to Germany in 2006, Tamara Zieschang, the interior minister for the state of Saxony-Anhalt, said at a news conference. He has been practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg, she said.“As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city,” Saxony-Anhalt’s governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters.

“Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many.”The violence occurred in Magdeburg, a city of about 240,000 people west of Berlin that serves as Saxony-Anhalt’s capital. Friday’s attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people