Attack in Magdeburg Kills Five People, Doctors from Saudi Arabia

The perpetrators of the attack on the Magdeburg Christmas market, Germany, have been arrested (Screenshot/The Sun).

JAKARTA - At least five people were killed in a car crash attack at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg. In addition, more than 200 people were reported injured.

Local officials announced that the attacker was a man from Saudi Arabia. The perpetrator has been arrested on suspicion of crashing a car into the crowd.

The attack on Friday, December 20, 2024, local time, against market visitors who had gathered to celebrate the Christmas season occurred amid a heated debate over security and migration during the general election campaign in Germany, where the right-wing camp won the most votes.

"It is a terrible act to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in the center of the former East German city, where he laid white roses at a church to honor the victims.

"We now know that more than 200 people have been injured. Almost 40 people are seriously injured so we have to be very worried about them," he said again.

German authorities are investigating a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian doctor who has lived in Germany for almost two decades. Police searched his home overnight in connection with the car crash.

The motive remains unclear and police have not named a suspect. He has been identified in German media as Taleb A.

A Saudi source told Reuters that Saudi Arabia had warned German authorities about the attacker after he posted extremist views on his personal X account that threatened peace and security.

Der Spiegel magazine reported that the suspect sympathized with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. It did not say where it got the information.

Germany's domestic intelligence agency declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.

Germany's FAZ newspaper said it had interviewed the suspect in 2019, describing him as an anti-Islam activist.

"People like me, who have an Islamic background but no longer believe, get neither understanding nor tolerance from Muslims here."

"I am the most aggressive critic of Islam in history. If you don't believe me, ask the Arabs," the perpetrator said in an interview with Germany's FAZ five years ago.

Andrea Reis, who was at the market that day, returned on Saturday, December 21, 2024, with her daughter Julia to light candles near the church overlooking the site.

He said they were almost killed if not for being in the path of the car-ramming attack.

"I said, let's go and buy some sausages, but my daughter said no. Then I took her for a walk."

"If we had stayed where we were, we would have been in the path of the car. The children were screaming, crying for mummy. You can't forget that," he told Reuters.

Scholz's Social Democrats are trailing the far-right AfD and the leading conservative opposition in opinion polls ahead of a snap general election set for Feb. 23, 2025.

The AfD, which enjoys strong support in the former East, has led calls for a crackdown on migration to the country.

Its chancellor candidate Alice Weidel and deputy leader Tino Chrupalla issued a statement on Saturday condemning the attack.

"The horrific attack on the Christmas market in Magdeburg, in the middle of a peaceful Christmas season, has shaken us all," they said.

A prominent Social Democratic lawmaker in the Bundestag warned against jumping to conclusions and said it did not appear the attacker had an Islamist motive.

"Now we have to wait for the investigation. It seems the circumstances here are different than initially assumed," Dirk Wiese told the Rheinische Post newspaper.