What is known so far about the Magdeburg market attack
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Here is what we know so far about the man who was arrested as the suspected driver in a car-ramming attack on Friday at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg in which five people were killed and some 200 injured.
LIFE IN GERMANY
The suspect is a 50-year-old from Saudi Arabia with permanent residence status in Germany, where he has been living for almost two decades.
The suspect has not been named by authorities. Multiple German media reports refer to him as Taleb A.
The suspect had worked as a psychiatrist at a specialist rehabilitation clinic for criminals with addictions in Bernburg since March 2020. “Since the end of October 2024, he has been absent due to holiday and illness,” the facility said in a statement.
He lived on a quiet street near the centre of Bernburg, a town of 30,000, south of Magdeburg, in a three-storey apartment block.
POSSIBLE MOTIVE
German authorities said early on that the suspect was not known to authorities as an Islamist.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser declined to comment on the suspect’s motives for the attack or political affiliations but said his Islamophobia was “clear to see”.
The local prosecutor in Magdeburg, Horst Nopens, said a possible factor in the attack may have been the suspect’s “dissatisfaction with the treatment of Saudi refugees in Germany” but added that the motive remained unclear.
FAR-RIGHT SYMPATHIES
Taleb A. appeared in a number of media interviews in 2019 reporting on his activist work helping Saudi Arabians who had turned their back on Islam to flee to Europe.
In a BBC documentary from July 2019, the man speaks about founding the platform wearesaudis.net after he became an atheist and claimed asylum in Germany.
He is a fierce critic of Islam in these interviews, telling Germany’s FAZ newspaper in June that year: “There is no good Islam.”
His account on social media platform X, verified by Reuters, indicated support for the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), as well as for U.S. billionaire Elon Musk, who has criticised German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and expressed support for the AfD.
How did the attack unfold?
At 19:02 local time (18:02 GMT), the first call to emergency services was made.
The caller reported that a car had driven into a crowd at a Christmas market in the middle of town.
The caller assumed it was an accident, police said, but it soon became clear this wasn’t the case.
The driver, police said, had used traffic lights to turn off the road and onto a pedestrian crossing, leading him through an entry point to the market which was reserved for emergency vehicles, injuring a number of people on the way.
Unverified footage on social media showed the driver speeding the vehicle through a pedestrian walkway between Christmas stalls.
Eyewitnesses described jumping out of the car’s path, fleeing or hiding.
Police said the driver then returned to the road the way he came in and was forced to stop in traffic. Officers already at the market were able to apprehend and arrest the driver here.
Footage showed armed police confronting and arresting a man who can be seen lying on the ground next to a stationary vehicle – a black BMW with significant damage to its front bumper and windscreen.
The entire incident was over in three minutes, police said.
Who are the victims?
A nine-year-old child and four adults are confirmed to have died in the attack.
More than 200 people have been injured and at least 41 of those are in a critical condition.
The toll had earlier been reported as two dead and 68 injured, but was revised to the much higher totals on Saturday morning.
