“TERRIBLE DEED”
Surveillance video of the attack showed a black BMW driving at high speed straight through a dense crowd, running over or scattering bodies amid the festive stalls selling snacks, handicrafts and traditional mulled wine.
Police said the vehicle drove “at least 400m across the Christmas market” leaving behind destruction, debris and broken glass on the city’s central town hall square.
The attack came eight years after Tunisian man drove a truck through a Berlin Christmas market, killing 13 people in Germany’s deadliest jihadist attack.
One woman told Die Welt daily: “I don’t know what world we’re living in, where someone would use such a peaceful event to spread terror.”
The sorrow and anger sparked by the latest attack, in which a child was killed, seemed set to inflame a heated debate on immigration and security as Germany heads for Feb 23 elections.
The leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel, which has focused on jihadist attacks in its campaign against immigrants, wrote on X: “When will this madness stop?”
“What happened today affects a lot of people. It affects us a lot,” Fael Kelion, a 27-year-old Cameroonian living in the city, told AFP.
“I think that since (the suspect) is a foreigner, the population will be unhappy, less welcoming,” he said.
Michael Raarig, 67 an engineer, expressed his sorrow at the site, telling AFP that “I am sad, I am shocked. I never would have believed this could happen, here in an east German provincial town.”
He added that he believed the attack “will play into the hands of the AfD” which has had its strongest support in the formerly communist eastern Germany.
Source: CNA
