Attack at Christmas market in Germany leaves at least two dead, 68 injured

Magdeburg’s University Hospital said it was taking care of 10 to 20 patients but was preparing for more, dpa reported.

Debris could be seen on the ground in footage of a cordoned-off part of the market.

The car drove into the market at around 7pm, when it was busy with holiday shoppers looking forward to the weekend.

“This is a terrible event, particularly now in the days before Christmas,” Saxony-Anhalt governor Reiner Haseloff said. Haseloff told dpa that he was on his way to Magdeburg but couldn’t immediately give any further information.

Chancellor OIaf Scholz posted on X: “My thoughts are with the victims and their relatives. We stand beside them and beside the people of Magdeburg.”

Magdeburg, which is west of Berlin, is the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt and has about 240,000 residents.

The suspected attack came eight years after an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin. On December 19, 2016, an Islamic extremist ploughed through a crowded market with a truck, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Christmas markets are an annual holiday tradition in Germany, cherished since the Middle Ages and successfully exported to much of the Western world. In Berlin alone, more than 100 markets opened last month, bringing the smells of mulled wine, roasted almonds and bratwurst to the capital. Other markets abound across the country.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said late last month that there were no concrete indications of a danger to Christmas markets this year, but that it was wise to be vigilant.