German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday visited the site of a deadly car-ramming attack on a crowded Christmas market that shocked the nation, to pay tribute to the victims.
Police arrested a 50-year-old Saudi doctor of psychiatry at the scene where two people were killed and 68 injured when an SUV ploughed through the festive crowd on Friday night.
A sombre Scholz, dressed in black, was joined by national and regional politicians and a security detail in the eastern city of Magdeburg, where they laid flowers outside the main church.
Mourning and bereaved residents had already left candles, flowers and children’s toys at the Johanneskirche church, where a memorial service was planned at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT).
As Germany was reeling from the shocking attack, which came eight years after a jihadist strike on a Berlin Christmas market claimed 13 lives, more details emerged about the Saudi man under arrest.
Named by German media as Taleb A., he was a doctor who had lived in Germany since 2006 and held a permanent residence permit, working in a clinic near Magdeburg.
He had long also worked as a rights activist who supported Saudi women and described himself as a “Saudi atheist”. The man voiced strongly anti-Islam views, echoing the rhetoric of the far-right, according to his social media posts and past interviews.
As his views expressed online grew more radical, he accused Germany’s past governments of a plan to “Islamise Europe” and voiced fears he was being targeted by authorities.
The Bild daily reported that an initial drug test had proved positive, after police officers on Friday used a so-called test that can detect narcotics ranging from cannabis to cocaine and methamphetamines.
– ‘Terrible deed’ –
Surveillance video of the attack showed a black BMW driving at high speed straight through a dense crowd, running over or scattering bodies amid the festive stalls selling snacks, handicrafts and traditional mulled wine.
Police said the vehicle drove “at least 400 metres across the Christmas market” leaving behind destruction, debris and broken glass on the city’s central town hall square.
The attack came eight years after Tunisian man drove a truck through a Berlin Christmas market, killing 13 people in Germany’s deadliest jihadist attack.
One woman told Die Welt daily: “I don’t know what world we’re living in, where someone would use such a peaceful event to spread terror.”
The sorrow and anger sparked by the latest attack, in which a child was killed, seemed set to inflame a heated debate on immigration and security as Germany heads for February 23 elections.
The leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel, which has focused on jihadist attacks in its campaign against immigrants, wrote on X: “When will this madness stop?”
“What happened today affects a lot of people. It affects us a lot,” Fael Kelion, a 27-year-old Cameroonian living in the city, told AFP.
“I think that since (the suspect) is a foreigner, the population will be unhappy, less welcoming,” he said.
Michael Raarig, 67 an engineer, expressed his sorrow at the site, telling AFP that “I am sad, I am shocked. I never would have believed this could happen, here in an east German provincial town.”
He added that he believed the attack “will play into the hands of the AfD” which has had its strongest support in the formerly communist eastern Germany.
– Series of attacks –
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had recently called for vigilance at Christmas markets, although she said that authorities had not received any specific threats.
Domestic security service the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had warned it considers Christmas markets an “ideologically suitable target for Islamist-motivated people”.
Germany has in recent time seen a series of suspected Islamist knife and other violent attacks which have inflamed public opinion.
Three people were killed and eight wounded in a stabbing spree at a street festival in the western city of Solingen in August. Police arrested a Syrian suspect over the attack that was claimed by IS.
In June, a policeman was killed in a knife attack in Mannheim. An Afghan national was detained.
The German government this year imposed new border controls with European neighbours and pledged to step up deportations of rejected asylum-seekers.
Germany’s conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz, who is ahead in pre-election opinion polls, has pledged in his campaign to show “zero tolerance” on crime and “stop illegal migration”.
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