City official Ronni Krug said he had no further information about the adults who died Friday night. It said 200 people were injured, of whom 41 were seriously or very seriously injured.
Prosecutor Horst Nopens said the suspect, a 50-year-old Saudi doctor, is under investigation on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and bodily harm. He is currently detained. He has lived in Germany since 2006, practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometers south of Magdeburg, officials said.
“There is no place more peaceful and joyful than a Christmas market,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “What a terrible act it is to hurt and kill so many people there with such brutality.”
Neurosurgeon Mahmoud Elenbaby said about 80 people were taken to Magdeburg University Hospital on Friday night. “We managed to stabilize most of them, but many are still in intensive care, and some are also in critical condition,” he said.
Who is the person arrested for the mass attack in Germany?
The alleged perpetrator of the mass attack at the Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg was identified as a psychiatrist and activist of Saudi nationality critic of Islam and who defines himself as “ex-Muslim.”
The man is identified as Taleb A according to the networks and was born in Saudi Arabia. Live in Germany since 2006, after beginning specialized medical training and according to the Police, the details of the crime are still unknown, but they understand that he was a solitary perpetrator.
“We are considering everything,” a police spokesman said. In recent years, the man accused former Chancellor Angela Merkel of having promoted the “Islamization of Europe.”
On social media, the suspect recently launched accusations against the German authorities, some of them formulated in a confusing manner. He singled them out for not doing enough to combat Islamism..
According to several German media, He called for a life sentence for Merkel, although as a supporter of reviving the death penalty in Germany, he said it would be better. “She deserves to be killed,” the man said.
The reasons behind the attack
There were still no answers about what motivated the man to drive his black BMW into a crowd in the eastern German city. Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of daily tweets and retweets focused on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.
He also accused German authorities of not doing enough to combat what he called the “Islamism of Europe.”
The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the brink of tears and marring a festive event that is part of a centuries-old German tradition. This led several other German cities to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and in solidarity with the loss of Magdeburg.
Germany has suffered a series of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and injured eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.
Magdeburg is a city of about 240,000 inhabitants west of Berlin that serves as the capital of Saxony-Anhalt. Friday’s attack occurred eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
Source: Ambito
