Two people were killed and 10 others were injured on March 3 when a car was driven into a crowd of pedestrians in Mannheim, Germany, local police said.
“On Monday afternoon, at about 12:15 p.m. local time, a 40-year-old suspect drove a car into a group of people” on Planken, a central shopping street in the city center, Mannheim police said in a statement posted on the department’s website. Two people were killed and five seriously injured, and five others suffered minor injuries, according to the statement.
Police said that the suspect, a German from the country’s western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, has been arrested. At this stage, authorities have not assumed a “political motive.”
Eyewitnesses described people lying on the ground at the scene and at least two being resuscitated.
The car, described by witnesses as a black SUV, was driven into a crowd at Paradeplatz, a major square in the downtown area that lies at the end of a pedestrianized street, according to police.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in a post on social media platform X, labeled the incident a “senseless act of violence.”
“Once again we mourn with Mannheim,” he said. “Once again we mourn with the relatives of the victims of a senseless act of violence and fear for those injured. We cannot accept this. I would like to thank all the emergency services from the bottom of my heart. I wish the eyewitnesses a lot of strength to process what they have experienced.”
The investigation will be taken over by a central agency that investigates and prosecutes serious crime across Germany, in cooperation with Mannheim’s public prosecutor’s office.
The incident occurred as crowds gathered in cities across western Germany’s Rhineland for parades to mark the beginning of Carnival season.
Security has been a top concern in Germany, with police on high alert for this year’s Carnival parades since social media accounts linked to the ISIS terrorist group called for attacks on the events in Cologne and Nuremberg.
Mannheim has a population of 326,000 and lies about 52 miles south of Frankfurt.
It comes just weeks after an Afghan national drove a car into a crowd of protesters marching in Munich on Feb. 13.
That attack claimed the lives of two people, a 37-year-old woman and her 2-year-old daughter, and injured 39 others.
In December 2024, six people were killed and more than 200 were injured when a car slammed into a Christmas market in Magdeburg.
In that case, the suspect, who was arrested, is a 50-year-old doctor originally from Saudi Arabia who has reportedly expressed anti-Islam views.
In May 2024, a police officer was killed, and a local politician was wounded during a stabbing attack in Mannheim.
