Seven Indians were injured in the Christmas market attack in Germany, sources said today. Three of them have been discharged from hospital, they said, adding the Indian Embassy is in touch with all the injured Indians.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in a statement said India condemns the “horrific and senseless attack at the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany.”
“Several precious lives have been lost and many have been injured. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims. Our Mission is in contact with Indians who are injured, as well as their families, and rendering all possible assistance,” the MEA said.
Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the “terrible, insane” attack that killed five people and shocked the nation, days before Christmas and eight years after a jihadist drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin.
The suspect, a Saudi, in the deadly car-ramming attack held strongly anti-Islam views and was angry with Germany’s migrant policy, news agency AFP reported on Saturday.
The accused, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, drove an SUV at high speed through a dense crowd on Friday, also injuring 205 people in the eastern city of Magdeburg. The mass carnage sparked sorrow and revulsion, with a nine-year-old child among the dead and casualties being treated in 15 regional hospitals.
A self-described “Saudi atheist” who as an activist who helped women flee the oil-rich kingdom, he has railed against Islam but also against what he saw as Germany’s permissive attitude towards refugees from other mainly Muslim countries.
Interior Minister Nancy Fraser said he held “Islamophobic” views, and a prosecutor said that “the background to the crime… could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany”.
Taha Al-Hajji of the Berlin-based European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights told AFP Abdulmohsen was “a psychologically disturbed person with an exaggerated sense of self-importance”.
Surveillance video footage of the attack showed a black BMW racing straight through the crowd, scattering bodies amid the festive stalls that were selling traditional handicrafts, snacks and mulled wine.
On Saturday, debris and discarded medical materials blew across the cordoned-off site, where stalls now stand empty around a giant Christmas tree, the event cancelled for the year out of respect for the victims.
The leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel, which has focused on jihadist attacks in its campaign against immigrants, wrote on X: “When will this madness stop?”
“What happened today affects a lot of people. It affects us a lot,” Fael Kelion, a 27-year-old Cameroonian living in the city, told AFP. “I think that since (the suspect) is a foreigner, the population will be unhappy, less welcoming.”
With inputs from AFP