A car runs over a crowd at a Christmas market in Germany; At least one dead and dozens injured, authorities say

The deputy mayor of the German city of Magdeburg said Friday that at least one person was killed and dozens injured after a car crashed into a busy Christmas market in what authorities suspect was an attack.

The driver of the car was arrested, German news agency dpa reported, citing unnamed government officials in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. Regional government spokesman Matthias Schuppe and city spokesman Michael Reif said they suspected this was a deliberate act.

Reif said there were “numerous injuries,” but did not give a precise number.

“The images are terrible,” he said. “My information is that a car crashed into the Christmas market visitors, but I still can’t say in which direction or at what distance.”

Magdeburg University Hospital said it was treating between 10 and 20 patients but was preparing to receive more, dpa reported.

Between 60 and 80 people were injured, a spokesman for the local rescue service told the AFP news agency.

The sounds of first responders’ sirens clashed with the market’s Christmas decorations, including baubles, stars and leaf garlands adorning vendors’ stalls. Images from the scene of a cordoned-off part of the market showed debris on the ground.

“This is a terrible event, especially in the days before Christmas,” said Saxony-Anhalt Governor Reiner Haseloff. Haseloff told dpa that he was heading to Magdeburg, but could not immediately give any information about the victims or what was behind the incident.

The young chancellor Scholz published in X: “My thoughts are with the victims and their families. We are at their side and at the side of the people of Magdeburg.”

Magdeburg, west of Berlin, is the capital of the state of Saxony-Anhalt and has around 240,000 inhabitants.

The alleged attack came eight years after the attack on a Christmas market in Berlin. On December 19, 2016, an Islamic extremist He drove a truck through a crowded Christmaskilling 13 people and injuring dozens more. The attacker died days later in a shooting in Italy.

Christmas markets are a large part of German culture as an annual Christmas tradition cherished since the Middle Ages and successfully exported to much of the Western world. In Berlin alone, more than 100 markets opened late last month, bringing the smells of mulled wine, roasted almonds and sausages to the capital. Other markets abound throughout the country.

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

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