3-minute Christmas market attack shakes Germany

MAGDEBURG, Germany — It took an attacker just three minutes to kill five people. It wound hundreds by ramming an SUV into a crowded holiday market Friday night, stunning Germany and shattering the peace of its Christmas season.

By about 7 p.m. Friday, the market, in the eastern city of Magdeburg, was packed with families and friends who had gathered under the glow of twinkling lights to celebrate the last workday before the holiday week.

Instead, the weekend began with horror. The attacker, described by officials as a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who had been living in Germany for nearly two decades, slowly maneuvered a rented car through a gap in the security barriers designed for emergency vehicles, then steered toward the heart of the celebration at the old market square.

He accelerated, trying to hurt as many people as possible, police said.

After maiming hundreds, he aimed to escape through a gap on the other end of the square but was stopped by traffic. Police officers swiftly surrounded the vehicle, forcing the driver to the ground as they apprehended him.

Among the five victims were a 9-year-old child and four adults. More than 200 others were wounded, 41 of them with injuries so severe that authorities have warned that the death toll could rise in the coming days. There were so many injured that some had to be flown to hospitals in other states.

Local Magdeburg authorities, who spoke at a news conference Saturday in City Hall, identified the attacker only as Taleb A., in keeping with Germany’s privacy laws, and said his motive was being investigated.

The attacker, who officials said first came to Germany in 2006, is being held while authorities investigate him for five counts of murder and more than 200 counts of attempted murder.

Officials said the suspect lived in Bernburg, about 25 miles south of Magdeburg, and police searched an apartment in that town late Friday. Two German news outlets reported that a clinic confirmed to local news media that the doctor worked as a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy at their hospital.

The doctor had an active social media presence that included posts criticizing Germany for what he called authorities’ tolerance of radical Islam, German news media reported. A security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that those reports were accurate.

In his social media, the man also expressed support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party and reposted comments by the group’s leaders warning of the threat of Islamic law being imposed in Germany.

Video from just after the attack showed a man with a trim beard and round, wire-rimmed glasses lying prone on the ground beside a BMW with a crumpled front fender and grille as officers pointed pistols at him and shouted at him not to move.

Local officials said they believed that the driver acted alone.

But in Magdeburg and around the country, the attack smashed the peace and tranquility many had sought at a turbulent moment for Germany, which faces a grueling winter campaign for snap elections in February after the government’s collapse this month.

Henriette Winkler, 36, who had visited the market just hours before the attack, was one of many Magdeburg residents who had been looking forward to a quiet Christmas. “Now I almost don’t feel like Christmas anymore,” she said.

Germans had started the weekend eager to celebrate the start of the holiday season after a year marked by concerns over the stagnant economy, increasing job cuts, and political paralysis that culminated in the chancellor losing a confidence vote in parliament.

“There is no place more peaceful and joyful than a Christmas market,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who visited the market Saturday morning. “What a horrific act it is to hurt and kill so many people there with such brutality.”

Ronni Krug, a member of the Magdeburg City Council, defended the security at the market as sufficient, saying that the emergency routes exploited by the attacker were necessary to allow ambulances through and were guarded by police.

The security — which includes large concrete blocks and police officers — was beefed up this year in response to a knife attack last summer that left three people dead and a dozen wounded.

After that attack, at a street festival in western Germany, knives were banned at holiday markets across the country, and security was increased for holiday festivals in Magdeburg and elsewhere.

In 2016, an Islamic extremist rammed a truck into a crowd at a Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 13. Since then, bollards blocking the entrances to street festivals and holiday markets in Germany have become standard, as have security cameras and an increased police presence, including plainclothes officers circulating among the crowds.

A line of large concrete blocks painted red and green had been placed at the perimeter of the Magdeburg Christmas market, which was set up in narrow streets holding wooden stalls decorated with twinkling lights and selling hot mulled wine, sausages, and gifts.

After Friday’s attack, cities across Germany sent extra patrols to the thousands of Christmas markets that remained open Saturday. In Cologne, authorities banned suitcases and larger bags at the market around the city’s cathedral. In Leipzig, police set up extra barriers at the entrances to the market.

“We will need to speak about security, but not today,” Reiner Haseloff, the governor of Saxony-Anhalt state, told reporters Saturday. “Today we are mourning.”

Germany needs to have an “intense discussion” about what it would take to “give citizens the feeling that in Germany, we not only have secure Christmas markets, but that we are able to live our lives how we want to,” Haseloff said.

Magdeburg, which is the capital of Saxony-Anhalt and has a population of about 240,000, was part of Communist East Germany. The annual market is set up in the center of the city, in front of City Hall. On Saturday, people came to lay flowers at a memorial set up on the steps of the Johanniskirche, or St. John’s Church, near the attack site.

The pile of flowers at the steps of the church grew throughout the day Saturday as visibly shaken people stopped by to pay their respects and to mourn.

Marko Heyer, 49, of Magdeburg, came with his wife to the church, both of them fighting back tears. Heyer recalled visiting the market — with its fairy-tale section with figures that recounted stories to children, as well as with the usual stands selling food and gifts — when he was a boy.

“In my opinion, it was the nicest Christmas market in Germany,” he said. “It will never be the same again.”

Surveillance footage circulating on social media and verified by The New York Times on Friday shows a car crashing into a large crowd at the market shortly after 7 p.m. The car then turns right onto another crowded street. Video of the aftermath shows people helping the wounded as cries are heard.

On Saturday, hundreds of people gathered inside and around Magdeburg’s Gothic cathedral for a ceremony to mourn the victims. Several hundred people also demonstrated, many chanting, “Deport, deport,” at a square nearby.

Inside the cathedral, Scholz, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and other dignitaries, as well as emergency workers and mourners, listened to a Lutheran bishop, Friedrich Kramer, try to make sense of the tragedy.

“The brutal attack yesterday evening leaves us sad and angry, helpless and fearful, uncertain and desperate, speechless and stunned and deeply affected,” he said. “The Christmas market as a place of peace has been destroyed.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.