Death Toll Rises to 5, Including a 9-Year-Old, After Man Drives Car into Hundreds of Shoppers at Christmas Market

Mar. 15, 2025

The aftermath of a Christmas market attack at the now-closed Magdeburg Christmas market in Germany on on Dec. 20, 2024.Photo:Jan Woitas/picture alliance via Getty

Jan Woitas/picture alliance via Getty

The death toll from the attack in Germany — where a man drove a car into shoppers at a high speed during a Christmas market — rose to five people, including a child who was 9 years old, as of Saturday, Dec. 21.

On Friday, Dec. 20, a man drove through a holiday market in Magdeburg, Germany, west of Berlin, in what officials are calling a “terrible” event that resulted in deaths, multiple serious injuries and an arrest at gunpoint, according toABC NewsandNBC News.

Officialsreferred to the incident as a terror attack, with footage from the market showing many people on the ground as emergency services arrived at the scene.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that 40 of the 200 injured people “are so seriously injured that we must be very worried" about them, according to the AP. “There is no more peaceful and cheerful place than a Christmas market,” Scholz added. “What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality.”

The scene outside of the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, on Dec. 21, 2024.Stefan Sauer/picture alliance via Getty

Stefan Sauer/picture alliance via Getty

PerCNN, the Christmas market featured 140 market stalls, an ice skating rink, a ferris wheel and more, as it was scheduled to be open from Nov. 22 to Dec. 29.

Horst Walter Nopens, lead prosecutor of the Magdeburg Prosecutor’s Office, said on Saturday that the victims included a 9-year-old. He added that the suspect faces “5 charges of homicide and 200 cases of attempted homicide and aggravated assault,” according to CNN.

In a social media update, the Magdeburg Saxony-Anhalt police department wrote on X that authorities “continue to ask for witness reports, photos and videos of the events at the Magdeburg Christmas market” be sent to them.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters that the suspect was “clearly Islamophobic,” per NBC News. The AP reported that the man identified himself on social media as a former Muslim and criticized Islam on X (formerly Twitter). Citing local outlets, the AP reported that the suspect has since been identified only as Taleb A. (with his last name being withheld due to local privacy laws).

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs shared onXits “solidarity with the German people and the families of the victims.”

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up forPEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletterfor breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

“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.

Bystander footage from German news agency dpa, and the AP, showed police detaining the suspect at gunpoint. As one officer pointed a gun at the suspect, multiple vehicles arrived to the scene and other officers then surrounded him.

“For me it’s important that when such a terrible, awful event happens, a terrible attack in which so many people were injured and killed, almost on the anniversary of the Breitscheidplatz terror attack in Berlin, that we as a country stay together and stick together,” Scholz told reporters, per CNN, referring to a2016 attackat a Christmas market in Berlin.

A memorial service is set to be held atMagdeburg Cathedralat 7 p.m. local time on Saturday, with crowds already paying their respects outside of the church.

source: people.com