At least two people have been killed and several injured after a driver in an SUV ploughed into a crowd in the centre of Leipzig in eastern Germany, the city’s mayor has said.
“The police have apprehended the suspected assailant,” Burkhard Jung said on Monday, adding that the authorities had the scene in a pedestrian zone under control. “We still don’t really know the motivation. We don’t know anything about the perpetrator.”
Emergency services workers said about two dozen people were hurt in the incident, which happened at about 4.45pm. The area had been full of shoppers and cafe patrons on a warm spring afternoon.
“Two people were seriously injured. They were treated immediately by first responders and then taken into the care of the ambulance service and transported to A&E,” said fire chief Axel Schuh. “We also have 20 other people affected.”
About 40 firefighters and 40 paramedics were on the scene, as well as two helicopters.
The driver is believed to have turned from Augustus Square in a grey Volkswagen Taigo into the shopping district of Grimmaische Street at high speed, and continued about 500 metres towards Naschmarkt Square. Photographs showed the vehicle’s windscreen shattered and its bonnet dented.
Witnesses said the car appeared to have been stopped by one of the retractable bollards protecting the area.
Jung, who arrived soon after the incident at the scene, asked onlookers to go home.
“It’s shocking. All I can do right now is express my solidarity with the victims’ families,” he told Leipziger Volkszeitung. “Everything else will now depend on the work of the police and the investigating authorities.”
Jörg and Jana Häfner told the newspaper they were sitting at a restaurant when the SUV sped down the street.
“There was a loud engine noise – and a bang,” said Jörg, who reported that patrons rushed to try to help a woman who was hit by the car. “There was a tremendous sense of solidarity,” said Jana, who is a nurse.
Shops in the area were ordered to close, and bodies covered with sheets were seen on the pavement. Police set up a cordon to deter onlookers.
Traditional Monday prayers for peace at St Nicholas church, a hotbed of anti-regime activism in communist East Germany, were overshadowed by the incident.
Church superintendent Sebastian Feydt said many people who had been nearby flocked to seek shelter or process their experience. He said the church would remain open to visitors until further notice.
Germany has had a series of car-ramming incidents in recent years.
Last year, two people were killed in the western city of Mannheim, when a 40-year-old German man drove a car into a group of pedestrians, only weeks after a similar attack by an Afghan asylum seeker on a trade union demonstration in Munich, killing two and injuring more than 40 including several children.
In December 2024, several people were killed in a car-ramming attack by a Saudi doctor on a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg. That incident came months after a stabbing attack by a Syrian man at a festival in the western city of Solingen.
