A driver rammed a vehicle into a Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg in central Germany on Friday evening, killing at least one person and wounding dozens of others, in what local officials said they suspected had been an attack.
The driver of the vehicle was arrested, according to local news reports.
At least of 68 people were wounded, 15 of them severely, said Michael Reif, the spokesman for the city of Magdeburg. Mr. Reif and a regional government spokesman, Matthias Schuppe, both said they suspected the episode had not been an accident, according to the German public broadcaster.
“This is a terrible event, especially now in the days leading up to Christmas,” Reiner Haseloff, the governor of Saxony-Anhalt state, where Magdeburg is the capital, told the German wire service D.P.A.
The area around the market was closed, a police spokeswoman said.
More than 1,000 temporary Christmas markets pop up every year in Germany, and they have been the target of terrorists in the past. In 2016, an extremist rammed a truck into a crowd in Berlin, killing 13. Since then, the police have secured many Christmas markets with temporary barriers.
It remains unclear how the driver on Friday was able to circumvent the barriers that were most likely protecting the market in Magdeburg.
The city of Magdeburg has 240,000 inhabitants and used to be part of communist East Germany. The year’s Christmas market is on the old market square, just in front of City Hall.
Surveillance footage circulating on social media and verified by The New York Times on Friday shows a car plowing into a large crowd at the Christmas market. The car then turns right onto another crowded street. Video of the aftermath shows people helping the wounded as cries are heard.
“The reports from Magdeburg are alarming,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in social media post. “My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
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