Germans mourn attack on Christmas market with no answers about why
Send a link to a friend
 [December 21, 2024]
By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER, SARA ABOUBAKR and VANESSA GERA
MAGDEBURG, Germany (AP) — Germans on Saturday mourned a violent attack
and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor intentionally
drove a black BMW into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers,
killing at least two people, including a small child, and injuring at
least 60 others.
Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the site of the attack Friday
evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in
Germany for nearly two decades, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about
40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.
Several German media outlets identified the man as Taleb A., withholding
his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a
specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.
Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market
on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. A Berlin
church choir whose members witnessed the 2016 Christmas market attack
sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God's mercy, offering their prayers and
solidarity with the victims.
The man behind the attack
There were still no answers Saturday as to what caused him to drive into
a crowd in the eastern German city of Magdeburg.
Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of
tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the
religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.
He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat
what he said was the “Islamism of Europe.” Some described him as an
activist who helped Saudi women flee their homeland. He has also voiced
support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD)
party.
Recently, he seemed focused on his theory that German authorities have
been targeting Saudi asylum seekers.
Prominent German terrorism expert Peter Neumann said he had yet to come
across a suspect in an act of mass violence with that profile.
“After 25 years in this ‘business’ you think nothing could surprise you
anymore. But a 50-year-old Saudi ex-Muslim who lives in East Germany,
loves the AfD and wants to punish Germany for its tolerance towards
Islamists — that really wasn’t on my radar, " Neumann, the director of
the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political
Violence at King’s College London, wrote on X.
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.
“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.”
Magdeburg is still shaken
The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the
verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a
centuries-old German tradition. It prompted several other German towns
to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of
solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but has
increased its police presence at them.
[to top of second column]
|
Forensics work on a damaged car sitting with its doors open after a
driver plowed into a busy Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany,
early Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (Hendrik Schmidt/dpa via AP)
Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years,
including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight
at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.
Magdeburg is 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 a crowded Christmas
market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The
attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled
to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in
the city cathedral in the evening.
A recount of the horrifying attack
Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa
showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the
road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted
at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers
swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.
Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose
salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on
the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at
first they were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the
market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into
the air by the car.
Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she
recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right
onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at
the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.
The number of injured people was overwhelming.
“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 have
enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold," she said.
The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white
tape and police vans every 50 meters (about 54 yards). Police with
machine pistols guarded every entry to the market.
Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.
Christmas markets are a German holiday tradition cherished since the
Middle Ages, now successfully exported to much of the Western world.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry condemned the attack on X.
___
Aboubakr reported from Cairo and Gera from Warsaw, Poland.
All contents © copyright 2024 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
