Christmas market attack: Sorrow and fury in German town

Well wishers lay flowers near the site of a car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, eastern Germany, on December 21, 2024, resulting in several deaths and dozens of injured. | Photo by Ronny HARTMANN / AFP

MAGDEBURG, Germany — The German city of Magdeburg was in mourning Saturday over a car-ramming attack that brought death and carnage to its Christmas market, but the sorrow gave way to anger when the politicians showed up.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz led a group of black-clad ministers who condemned the violence and laid flowers to pay their respects and offer condolences for the five dead and more than 200 wounded, many children among the casualties.

But the sombre silence outside the city’s cathedral, where candles, flowers and toys had been laid out for victims and survivors, was broken when a man shouted out: “Scholz, do politics for the people!”

“Sit down at the table with the AfD,” yelled Kevin Baecker, a 36-year-old entrepreneur, referring to the far-right Alternative for Germany party that is especially strong in the country’s ex-communist east.

Debris and closed stalls are seen on a Christmas market one day after a car-ramming attack in Magdeburg, eastern Germany, on December 21, 2024, resulting in several deaths and dozens of injured. | Photo by Ronny HARTMANN / AFP

The bloody attack — in which a 50-year-old Saudi medical doctor was arrested near the battered car — comes just days before Christmas, but also in a volatile campaign period leading up to February 23 elections.

German politics have long been torn over the flashpoint issues of immigration and security. Ex-chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcome culture for refugees almost a decade ago fuelled the rise of the AfD, which now polls near 20 percent.

Baecker let his anger explode when he saw the Social Democrat Scholz and the leader of the conservative opposition, Friedrich Merz, who came to show their respect to the residents of Magdeburg, a town of around 250,000 people southwest of the capital.

As a throng of TV cameras and security personnel surrounded the political delegation, the debris and broken glass from Friday night’s carnage still littered the ground, along with discarded blue medical gloves and silver heat blankets.

Police officers stand at the site of a Christmas market where a car crashed into a crowd injuring more than 60 people the evening before, on December 21, 2024 in Magdeburg, eastern Germany. – At least one person was killed and 68 injured December 20, 2024 in a suspected attack on a Christmas market in the eastern Germany city of Magdeburg, local authorities said. (Photo by Ronny HARTMANN / AFP)

 ‘Germans being crushed again’

The Magdeburg attack came eight years and a day after a jihadist attack in Berlin in which a Tunisian man committed to the Islamic State group rammed a truck through the capital’s Christmas market, claiming 13 lives.

“I had a very bad night,” said Magdeburg resident Fred Koehler, a 63-year-old caretaker, “because it is Germans being crushed again.”

The perpetrator’s motive remained unclear and security experts say his age, professional profile and views he had expressed online are very different to those of previous attacks.

The suspect, Taleb Jawad Al Abdulmohsen, has declared himself a “Saudi atheist” with strongly anti-Islam views typically expressed by the far-right. He had warned against the “Islamisation” of Europe and apparently feared being watched by the authorities.

Some in Magdeburg chose to focus their anger at the government.

“All this is happening with the permission of ‘our regime’ in Berlin, which tolerates this,” fumed Koehler.

He said he was angry at mainstream politicians from the conservatives of Merkel to the Social Democrats of Scholz, but also the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats.

“All these ‘important’ people will celebrate Christmas in peace!”

Like his friend, Andreas Hecht, a 74-year-old retiree who came to lay flowers with him, he said that the AfD would be needed to provide the solution to the country’s security problems.

– ‘Don’t abandon field to populists’ –

Many others in Magdeburg chose to focus on their grief and leave divisive politics aside for now.

“We are shocked, speechless and we say to ourselves that we could have been there, at that moment,” said Harm Boems, a 19-year-old student with tears in his eyes.

Boems said that for now it was important “to concentrate for a few hours, for a few days… on the victims, the people who suffered.”

He allowed that “maybe the politicians at the federal level are in one way or another responsible”.

But Boems stressed that security measures had been taken to protect the popular market during the winter holidays, where families came to taste gingerbread and sausages and drink traditional mulled wine.

Another mourner, German-American Knut Panknin, 50, who laid a wreath with his companion, said that “it is very important not to let politicians instrumentalise this attack”.

Visiting Germany to spend the holidays with relatives, the Washington resident said that “politicians must be concerned about security and order. At the same time, they must not abandon the field to the populists.”