German Christmas market victims including nine-year-old child and four adults, officials reveal as murder and attempted murder charges are being prepared

Four adults and a nine-year-old child have been killed in a horrifying attack on a Christmas market in Germany. 

Officials confirmed that at least five people have died after a car rammed into a massive crowd of shoppers at a Christmas market in Magdeburg at around 7pm on December 20.

At least 205 people have also been injured during the massacre, while the suspect, a 50-year-old Saudi doctor, has since been arrested. 

Prosecutor Horst Nopens said he is under investigation on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and bodily harm. He is currently being questioned. 

Several German media outlets identified the suspect as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy. 

He has lived in Germany since 2006 after arriving in the country as a refugee from Saudi Arabia, and has been practicing medicine in Bernburg, about 25 miles south of Magdeburg, officials said.

In 2013 he was sentenced by a German court for ‘disturbing the public peace by threatening to commit crimes’, according to Der Spiegel.

Three years later, he applied for asylum in Germany. And his application was approved within four months. 

The country has been in mourning following Friday’s attack, with locals placing candles and tributes at the site where the car drove into a crowd. 

The motive of the attack remains unclear at this stage, although officials said the suspect’s ‘dissatisfaction with the treatment of refugees from Saudi Arabia in Germany’ may have been a factor.

Officials told a press conference on Saturday that 205 people were injured in the attack, 41 of which have been hurt badly. 

Neurosurgeon Mahmoud Elenbaby said some 80 patients were brought to Magdeburg’s university hospital on Friday night. 

The suspect is currently being interviewed by police and it is believed he was working alone, he added. 

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect shared dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who left the faith.

He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he said was the ‘Islamism of Europe.’

Mourners lit candles and placed flowers outside a church near the market on the cold and gloomy day. Several people stopped and cried. 

A Berlin church choir whose members witnessed a previous Christmas market attack in 2016 sang Amazing Grace, a hymn about God’s mercy, offering their prayers and solidarity with the victims.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening.

The violence shocked Germany and the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that’s part of a centuries-old German tradition. 

It prompted several other German towns to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss.

German officials said emergency services received their first call about the attack at 7:02pm local time and brought the situation under control by 7:05pm. 

They added that attacker drove into the market through a rescue entrance, where they were no barricades. 

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. 

A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is located in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs and thought at first they were fireworks. 

She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described the horror of what she witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

‘My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold,’ she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red-and-white tape and police vans every 50 meters (yards). Police with machine pistols guarded every entry to the market. Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.