Two dead, five hurt as car hits crowd in German city

MANNHEIM, Germany: A man drove a car into a crowd in Germany on Monday, killing two people and seriously injuring five, police said, adding that a 40-year-old German man was arrested over the suspected attack.

Politicians and police treated the noon-time vehicle rampage in the southwestern city of Mannheim as a deliberate act. Germany has been shocked by two other deadly car-ramming attacks since December.

“Once again we mourn with the relatives of the victims of a senseless act of violence and fear for the injured,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a post on X, adding: “We cannot accept this.” “This act is one of several crimes in the recent past in which a car was misused as a weapon,” said the Baden-Wuerttemberg state interior minister Thomas Strobl.

He said the sole suspect in the case lived in the city of Ludwigshafen, which lies directly across the river Rhine from Mannheim but is in the neighbouring state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Strobl added that investigators saw “no indication of an extremist or religious background” and that “the motivation could be rooted in the person of the perpetrator himself,” suggesting psychological troubles.

The suspect was arrested and is being treated in hospital. The driver ploughed a small black Ford passenger vehicle through a downtown pedestrian shopping area around 12:15 local time (1115 GMT) where a carnival market was located with dozens of food stalls, rides and games.

“It´s heartbreaking,” cafe owner Kasim Timur, 57, was quoted as telling news site Der Spiegel, adding that one of his staff had seen seriously injured people, among them children. Police with heavy weapons soon shut down and evacuated the inner city as helicopters flew overhead and citizens were told to stay indoors via warning apps during the “life-threatening situation”.

Enes Yildiz, 24, who works in tax consulting in a nearby office, said: “I just heard a very, very loud noise. It was rather extraordinary, not a noise that you hear every day.” He went down to the street and saw a dead body lying on the ground and pools of blood, he said. The motionless victim appeared to have been thrown through the air by the impact. “There were a lot of people crying, people shouting for help, people calling the police.” He walked further down the street to witness the carnage at the city´s central Paradeplatz: “It was a mess, as if it had been hit by a bomb. The whole place was in disarray.”