At least 2 dead and 60 hurt after car drives into German Christmas market in suspected attack
Magdeburg (AP): A car plowed into a busy outdoor Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, killing at least two people and injuring at least 60 others in what authorities called a deliberate attack.
The driver was arrested at the scene shortly after the car barrelled into the market at around 7 pm, when it was teeming with holiday shoppers looking forward to the weekend.
Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect's arrest on a walkway in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone. Other officers soon arrived to take the man into custody.
The two people confirmed dead were an adult and a toddler, but officials said additional deaths could not be ruled out because 15 people had been seriously injured.
The violence shocked the city, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring a festive event that is part of a centuries-old German tradition.
The suspect is a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who moved to Germany in 2006, Tamara Zieschang, the interior minister for the state of Saxony-Anhalt, said at a news conference. He has been practising medicine in Bernburg, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Magdeburg, she said.
"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. "Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many."
The violence occurred in Magdeburg, a city of about 240,000 people west of Berlin that serves as Saxony-Anhalt's capital. Friday's attack came eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
Christmas markets are a huge part of German culture as an annual holiday tradition cherished since the Middle Ages and successfully exported to much of the Western world. In Berlin alone, more than 100 markets opened late last month and brought the smells of mulled wine, roasted almonds and bratwurst to the capital. Other markets abound across the country.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser 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.
Hours after Friday's tragedy, the wail of sirens clashed with the market's festive ornaments, stars and leafy garlands.
Magdeburg resident Dorin Steffen told dpa that she was at a concert in a nearby church when she heard the sirens. The cacophony was so loud "you had to assume that something terrible had happened".
She called the attack "a dark day" for the city.
"We are shaking," Steffen said. "Full of sympathy for the relatives, also in the hope that nothing has happened to our relatives, friends and acquaintances."
The attack reverberated far beyond Magdeburg, with Haseloff calling it a catastrophe for the city, state and country. He said flags would be lowered to half-staff in Saxony-Anhalt and that the federal government planned to do the same.
"It is really one of the worst things one can imagine, particularly in connection with what a Christmas market should bring," the governor said.
Chancellor OIaf Scholz posted on X: "My thoughts are with the victims and their relatives. We stand beside them and beside the people of Magdeburg."
NATO's secretary-general and the European Commission's president also expressed their condolences on X.
Magdeburg Mayor Simone Borris, who was on the verge of tears, said officials plan to arrange a memorial at the city's cathedral on Saturday.
After a soccer match on Friday evening between Bayern Munich and Leipzig, Bayern CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen asked fans at the club's stadium to observe a minute of silence.
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Farmer suicides decline in Karnataka due to Congress-led govt guarantees, friendly schemes: Report
Bengaluru: Karnataka has witnessed a significant drop in farmer suicides, from 922 in the year 2022-23 and 1,061 in 2023-24 to 346 cases in the current year (2024-25). This reduction in distress is attributed to delay in loan recovery, timely input subsidies for seeds and fertilisers, good rainfall, and state government's initiatives.
Karnataka has faced a heavy toll of farmer suicides over the past few years, with a total of 2,329 recorded since 2022 due to farm distress, largely driven by crop loss due to floods and drought, according to data sourced from the Revenue Department, as cited by Deccan Herald on Saturday.
In the last three years, districts such as Haveri (254 suicides), Mysuru (167 suicides), and Dharwad (148 suicides) have been hit badly, with alarming numbers also reported from Kalaburagi (142) and Belagavi (141).
Despite these unfortunate incidents, the state government has worked to alleviate the burden by clearing compensation for the majority of these cases. Of the 2,329 reported suicides, only 20 cases remain unresolved due to technical issues. In addition, families of farmers who die by suicide receive a compensation of Rs 5 lakh, with the spouse entitled to a monthly pension of Rs 2,000. Farmers who die due to accidents, such as snakebites, are compensated with Rs 2 lakh.
Krishna Byre Gowda, the state's Revenue Minister, pointed to five guarantee schemes launched by the Congress government, which have provided crucial economic support to rural communities and are believed to have played a key role in preventing suicides in Karnataka. He told DH the importance of the government’s directive to financial institutions, urging them to issue “caution” notices to defaulting farmers rather than seizing their properties.
The government had also advised the state level bankers' committee to be sympathetic towards defaulting farmers since crops in Belagavi, Gadag, Vijayapura and Dharwad had been affected by heavy rains. Gowda also said the co-operation department and other departments had kept a tight vigil on private lenders and financial institutions, who charge high interest rates, the report added.
Notably, Shivanand Patil, Minister for Agriculture Marketing and Sugar, told the news outlet that initiatives like the Interest Subvention Scheme (ISS), along with the timely release of the Minimum Support Price (MSP) along with the state's component for several crops like coconut, food grains including urad dal, green gram, sunflower and maize have also helped in preventing suicides.
Patil further noted that increasing the zero percent loan to farmers to Rs 5 lakh and offering up to Rs 15 lakh loans at 3 percent interest rate have reduced farmers' reliance on private lenders.
