More than a thousand people gathered in Magdeburg on Saturday evening to commemorate the victims of the deadly attack on a Christmas market in the central German city a day earlier.
Five people were killed, including a nine-year-old child, and 200 injured when a car sped through the crowd at the busy festive market on Friday evening, according to the authorities.
The suspect, a 50-year-old man from Saudi Arabia, was arrested at the scene and taken into custody.
Relatives of the victims, emergency responders and invited guests including German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Olaf Scholz attended a private memorial service in the city’s cathedral on Saturday evening.
“The Christmas market as a place of peace has been destroyed,” Bishop Friedrich Kramer said.
Visiting the scene of the attack earlier on Saturday, Scholz called the incident a “terrible, insane act.”
“There is no place more peaceful and joyful than a Christmas market,” Scholz said. “It is a horrific act to harm and kill so many people with such brutality in such a place.”
The chancellor also called for social cohesion, saying it was important to him “that we as a country stay together, that we stick together, and that we hook under each other, that hatred does not determine our togetherness.”
During the memorial service, some 1,000 people gathered outside the cathedral to watch the commemoration on a large screen, lay flowers and light candles, according to initial police estimates.
The bells of the church rang exactly 24 hours after the attack, which took place shortly after 7 pm (1800 GMT) on Friday.
Around 1,000 people also gathered in a central square in the city, with some chanting far-right slogans and carrying flags showing the logo of the far-right, ultranationalist Homeland party, formerly called the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD).
Magdeburg is a city of some 237,000 people in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, some 150 kilometres west of Berlin.
Police in other German cities are now on high alert, with a spokesperson saying there would be an increased police presence at Christmas markets in Berlin.
Suspect acted alone, police say
The suspect, who has been identified as Taleb A according to German privacy laws, is being investigated on five counts of murder and 200 counts of attempted murder with grievous bodily harm, according to the head of the local public prosecutor’s office, Horst Walter Nopens.
According to the current state of the investigations, the suspect was a lone…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Yahoo News – Latest News & Headlines…