The suspect is a 50-year-old doctor, originally from Saudi Arabia, who arrived in the European country in 2006; Olaf Scholz, head of the German government promised to act against ‘those who want to sow hatred’
A driver drove his vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market this Friday (20) in the northern city of Magdeburg, leaving five dead and more than 200 injured, authorities said, who arrested a Saudi man as a suspect in attack. Occurring at a time of election campaign in Germany, the attack in Magdeburg resembles another eight years ago claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group at a Christmas market in Berlin, in which 12 people died. The suspect is a 50-year-old doctor, originally from Saudi Arabia, who arrived in Germany in 2006.
He worked in the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, of which Magdeburg is the capital, located about 160 kilometers from Berlin. The man, identified by the local press as Taleb A., acted alone, said the head of the state government, Reiner Haseloff, who saw the attack as a “temporal synchronization” deliberate for “political” reasons in view of the early legislative elections on February 23 . However, the suspect’s motivations are unclear. He was not registered by the police as an Islamist and, according to the German press, he even published opinions on social media denouncing the danger of Islamization.
The vehicle advanced into the crowd “for at least 400 meters through the Christmas market,” a police spokesman for the city of 250,000 inhabitants told AFP. “It’s a dimension that none of us can imagine,” declared Haseloff. , head of Government of Germany, promised this Saturday (21) to act “against those who want to sow hatred” and made an appeal for the country to remain “united”, after the collision “It is important that we remain united as a country and that we talk with each other”, said the chancellor at the scene of the tragedy, where he promised to act against “those who want to sow hatred”.
*With information from AFP
Published by Matheus Lopes
