As a result of the attack on the Christmas market in Germany, the number of dead has reached 5, there are more than 200 injured – Milli.Az

On Saturday, Germans mourned both the victims and their shaken sense of security after a Saudi doctor deliberately drove into a Christmas market packed with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people, including a young child, and injuring at least 200 others.

Authorities arrested a 50-year-old man at the scene of the attack in Magdeburg on Friday evening and took him into custody for questioning. He has lived in Germany since 2006, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Magdeburg. officials said.

The state governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters that the death toll had risen to five from the previous two figures, and more than 200 people were injured in total.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that about 40 of them were “so seriously injured that we should be very worried about them”.

Several German media reported that the suspect, whose last name was withheld in accordance with privacy laws, was Taleb A. and that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Mourners lit candles and laid flowers outside the church near the market on a cold and gloomy day. A few people stopped and cried. A Berlin church choir, whose members witnessed a previous attack on a Christmas market in 2016, sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God’s mercy, in solidarity and prayers with the victims.

There are still no answers as to what led a man to drive his black BMW into a crowd in eastern Germany on Saturday.

A self-described ex-Muslim, suspicious He shared dozens of tweets and retweets focusing on anti-Islamic topics, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the religion.

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He also accused the German authorities of not doing enough to fight “European Islamism”. Some have described her as an activist who helped Saudi women leave their homeland. He also expressed support for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Haseloff said Friday that authorities believed the man acted alone.

The violence shocked Germany and the city, reduced the mayor to tears and disrupted a holiday event that is part of a centuries-old German tradition. This prompted several other German cities to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a measure of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its markets open but increased its police presence.

Germany has suffered a series of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack in August at a festival in the western city of Solingen that killed three people and wounded eight others.

Magdeburg is a city of approximately 240,000 people, west of Berlin, serving as the capital of Saxony-Anhalt. The attack came on Friday eight years then one Islamic extremists entered the Christmas market with a truck in berlin 13 deaths and injures many others. The attacker was killed in a shootout in Italy a few days later.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser visited Magdeburg on Saturday and a memorial service will be held in the city’s cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags at federal buildings across the country to be flown at half-staff.

Verified the surrounding images are spread The German news agency dpa showed that the suspect was caught in the middle of the road at a tram stop. A nearby police officer yelled at the man, pointing a gun at the man and lying with his head tilted slightly up. Other officers gathered around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is in a shopping center across from the Christmas market, was talking on the phone during a break when she heard loud noises and thought they were fireworks at first. Later, he saw the car speeding through the market. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by a car.

Trembling as she described the horror she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car leave the market, turn right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee, and then stop at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of wounded was too high.

“My wife and I helped them for two hours. He ran home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find as there were not enough to cover the injured. And it was very cold,” he said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red and white tape and police vans every 50 meters. Policemen with automatic pistols guarded every entrance to the market. Some thermal security blankets are still lying on the street.

Christmas markets It is a German holiday tradition that has been preserved since the Middle Ages and is now successfully exported to much of the Western world.

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