MUNICH — German authorities said on Saturday that the death toll from a car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in eastern Germany had risen to five people, with more than 200 injured, dozens of them critically.
The car plowed 1,200 feet into a crowd in a narrow alley in Magdeburg, a city of about 240,000 people west of Berlin, where shoppers had gathered Friday night.
“This is a terrible, tragic event,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters from Magdeburg, adding that nearly 40 people “are so seriously injured we must be very worried about them.”
“We must understand the perpetrator and his motives to respond with the necessary criminal and other consequences,” he added.
The suspected driver was initially identified as a doctor from Saudi Arabia who lived in Germany, was detained, Reiner Haseloff, premier of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, said Friday. He said the suspect acted alone and there was no ongoing threat to the public.
On Saturday, two senior U.S. officials familiar with the matter identified the suspect as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen. He is a self-described member of the “liberal opposition” to Saudi Arabia who has voiced strong anti-Islamic and anti-immigration views.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had earlier told reporters that the suspect was “clearly Islamophobic.”
“We can confirm that,” Faeser said, without elaborating on the man’s political affiliations. “Everything else will be part of the investigation. There we’ll have to wait.”
Nopens said the motive is still being investigated but that “the background of the act” could be linked to “dissatisfaction with the treatment of Saudi Arabian refugees in Germany.”
The victims include four adults and a 9-year-old child, Nopens told reporters Saturday. He did not rule out additional deaths due to the severity of some of the injuries.
“The charges at the moment include five charges of homicide and 200 cases of attempted homicide and aggravated assault,” he said.
The suspect is 50 years old and entered Germany for the first time in 2006, according to Tamara Zieschang, interior minister of Saxony-Anhalt. He last worked as a doctor in Bernburg, about 30 miles south of Magdeburg, Zieschang said.
She called the incident one of the darkest days for Saxony-Anhalt and for Magdeburg.
The Salus clinic at the Bernburg psychiatric hospital confirmed in an email to NBC News that it employed the arrested suspect as a specialist in psychiatry, but that he had been off-duty since the end of October due to “vacation and illness.”
The spokesperson described the clinic as a facility “for the improvement and protection of addicted offenders.”
A short video of the incident posted on X and geolocated to Magdeburg shows a vehicle speeding through a crowd of shoppers, hitting dozens as others scramble to safety. The vehicle races straight before making a right turn out of view.
An eyewitness said they heard a “metallic scrape” from behind, before a car driving at “30, or maybe 40 miles an hour” drove straight at a crowd of people.
“All of a sudden you hear screaming and see a car,” Liam Clowes told Sky News, NBC News’ international partner. “The driver hasn’t applied any brakes or anything. It’s just driven through people and tried to hurt or kill.”
The man was driving a rental vehicle, Haseloff said.
Police released a hotline for people affected so they can contact their relatives. They announced on X that the Magdeburg Christmas market is closed due to “extensive police operations” there.
A memorial service will be held in Magdeburg’s cathedral at 7 p.m. local time on Saturday, the city’s mayor told Germany’s public broadcaster DW. A memorial site has also been set up close to the attack site at St. John’s Church.
Without specifically mentioning the attacker’s nationality, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the attack on X and expressed “solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims.”
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the U.S. is “horrified by the attack.”
“We send our condolences to those affected and stand by our friend and Ally Germany,” he posted on X.
The attack has intensified debates over uncontrolled immigration in Germany as the nation approaches snap elections in February after Scholz lost a confidence vote last week.
In September, the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, known as AfD, became the first far-right party to win the most votes in a state election since the Nazi era, when it triumphed in Thuringia, and could help to shape a new government come February.
The AfD’s success in Germany reflects a growing trend across western Europe after the far right also saw gains in France, Austria and the Netherlands.
Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Dutch Party for Freedom, has already scored an unexpected victory in the Netherlands after his anti-immigrant party won the most seats in the nation’s elections in November.
Responding to the attack in Germany, he called the event “another barbaric attack in Europe — this time by a man from Saudi Arabia.”
“I’ve been saying it for over 20 years: stop with those open borders,” he posted on X.
The suspect’s political allegiances are currently unclear, and his beliefs may not align with the conclusions that many have already drawn.
The attack has drawn comparisons with a similar incident that took place almost exactly eight years ago, in 2016, when a driver plowed into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens more.
Friday’s attack reverberated thousands of miles away in New York City, where police have increased security at holiday markets as a precaution, a senior NYPD official told NBC News on Friday.
Additional resources will be sent to numerous holiday markets and high-profile locations across New York. Threats have been made to some markets abroad, but no specific threat has been made in New York, the official said.
Carlo Angerer reported from Munich, Freddie Clayton from London, Antonio Planas from Orlando and Marie Brockling from Berlin.