At least two people died, and 60 others were injured after a vehicle rammed into a crowd at a Christmas market in Germany's eastern Magdeburg city late Friday.
The driver was immediately arrested following the incident, government sources told public broadcaster ARD. The exact number and severity of injuries remain unclear. Authorities are treating the incident as an "attack" as the car drove straight into the crowd.
A spokesman for the state government of Saxony-Anhalt confirmed the incident to the public broadcaster. Emergency services and firefighters were promptly dispatched to the scene.
Magdeburg, west of Berlin, is the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt and has about 240,000 inhabitants.
On Dec. 19, 2016 in Berlin, a Daesh terrorist attacker plowed through a crowd of Christmas market-goers with a truck, leaving 13 people dead and injuring dozens more. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had said late last month that there were no concrete indications of a danger to Christmas markets this year, but that it was wise to be vigilant.
The suspect is a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who first came to Germany in 2006, Saxony-Anhalt's interior minister, Tamara Zieschang, said at a news conference.
"As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city," Saxony-Anhalt's governor, Reiner Haseloff, told reporters.
Fifteen of the injured were hurt very seriously, according to government officials and the city government's website.
Haseloff said the two people who were confirmed to have died were an adult and a toddler, but that he couldn't rule out further deaths.
"But that is speculation now. Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many," he said.
Magdeburg's University Hospital said it was taking care of 10 to 20 patients but was preparing for more, dpa reported.
