dpa
Magdeburg, Germany
A nine-year-old child is among the five people killed in the car-ramming attack at a Christmas market in the central German city of Magdeburg, prosecutors said during a press conference on Saturday afternoon.
The other four victims are adults, said Horst Walter Nopens, the head of the local public prosecutor’s office. Another 200 people were injured, many of them seriously, when a man ploughed a car through the crowd at the Christmas market on Friday evening, he said.
According to the director of the Magdeburg police department, Tom-Oliver Langhans, the man used an escape and rescue route to reach the central square, with the whole incident lasting about three minutes. The suspect, who has been identified as Taleb A according to German privacy laws, was arrested at the scene and is being interrogated in police custody, Nopens said.
He is being investigated on five counts of murder and 200 counts of attempted murder with grievous bodily harm, Nopens said. According to the current state of the investigations, the suspect was a lone perpetrator, police said.
The emergency route said to have been used by the suspect to reach the Christmas market was not protected by barriers, according to the city administration. Taleb A is a 50-year-old doctor from Saudi Arabia, known as an Islam-critical activist. He has made erratic accusations on social media and in interviews, claiming German authorities are not doing enough to combat Islamism.
Previously an advocate for Saudi women fleeing their country, he later advised against seeking asylum in Germany, writing on his website in English and Arabic: "My advice: don’t ask for asylum in Germany.” The motive for the crime is still unclear, but the suspect may have been unhappy with the treatment of Saudi refugees in Germany, Nopens said. Saudi Arabian security sources said they had warned Germany about the suspected attacker. Riyadh had requested the extradition of the suspect, but Germany had not responded, they said.