Germans on Saturday mourned the victims of a terror attack in which authorities say a doctor drove into a busy outdoor X-Mas market, killing five people, injuring 200 others. The attack Friday evening in Magdeburg, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Berlin, killed a 9-year-old and four adults and injured 41 people badly enough that authorities warned the death toll could rise. The driver, a 50-year-old doctor who immigrated from Saudi Arabia in 2006, surrendered to police at the scene. He’s being investigated for five counts of suspected murder and 205 counts of suspected attempted murder, prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens said at a news conference. Police haven’t publicly named the suspect, but several German news outlets identified him as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy. Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect appears to have been an active user of the social media platform X, sharing dozens of tweets and retweets daily focusing on anti-Islam themes, criticizing the religion and congratulating Muslims who had left the faith. He also accused German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he referred to as the “Islamification of Europe.” (AP)
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