Monday Briefing

A memorial after the attack at the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany.Credit…Annegret Hilse/Reuters

An attack at a Christmas market shook Germany

On Friday evening, an attacker rammed an S.U.V. into a crowded Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg. The assault killed five people, including a 9-year-old boy, and wounded hundreds more in a matter of minutes. The driver accelerated to harm as many people as possible before trying to escape, the police said.

The attack has stunned Germany, which for years has been strengthening security measures around holiday markets in reaction to a similar attack in Berlin in 2016. Officials have been left trying to piece together a complicated profile of the suspect, who is now in custody and has been identified as Taleb A. in keeping with German privacy laws.

The authorities described him as a 50-year-old Saudi Arabian doctor who had been living in Germany for nearly two decades. He frequently criticized the German government and radical Islam on social media, and his extreme political posts online had previously prompted an alert to Germany from Saudi Arabia. No motive has yet been determined. Here’s what we know.

In Magdeburg: Mourners yesterday visited a memorial to the victims set up on the steps of a church across the street from the market. On Saturday night, several hundred people attended a rally where demonstrators chanted, “Deport! Deport!”