By Miranda Murray, James Mackenzie and Tom Sims
BERLIN, May 4 (Reuters) – Two people were killed and three others were seriously injured on Monday when a car drove into a central pedestrian zone of the eastern German city of Leipzig, Mayor Burkhard Jung said, the latest in a spate of such incidents in recent years in Germany.
Police arrested the driver, identifying him as a 33-year-old man with German citizenship. They said there was no further danger.
“We are mourning two deaths, currently three seriously injured people, and many others who were injured,” Jung told journalists at a media briefing on Monday evening, according to Leipziger Volkszeitung.
“It’s impossible to find the right words for this horrific attack,” he added.
Like other European countries, Germany has witnessed a series of car-ramming and stabbing incidents in recent years, some of which involved religious or political motivations and some carried out by people with mental health issues.
The prime minister of the state of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, said that the suspect had possible mental health issues, and officials said he surrendered without resistance, Leipziger Volkszeitung reported.
Police conducted a large-scale operation in the area with multiple emergency vehicles and road closures.
A city press release called it a “mass casualty event” but officials were unable to quantify the injuries.
A damaged Volkswagen SUV with a person on top of the vehicle was seen speeding through a pedestrian zone, local broadcaster Radio Leipzig reported.
Last year, two people were killed in the western city of Mannheim, when a 40-year-old man drove a car into a group of pedestrians, only weeks after a similar attack on a trade union demonstration in Munich, killing two and injuring more than 40, many children among them.
In December 2024, several people were killed in a car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg. That incident came months after a stabbing attack at a festival in the western city of Solingen.
(Reporting Miranda Murray, James Mackenzie and Tom Sims; Editing by Thomas Seythal and Bill Berkrot)
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