Fears are mounting of a ‘copycat’ attack in Europe after a BMW rammed into one of Germany’s famed Christmas markets, killing five people and injuring more than 200.
Greater Manchester Police and Hampshire Police today issued a warning to members of the public following the events in Magdeburg last night.
Chris Phillips, the former head of Britain’s counter terrorism security office, also stressed that people should remain on high alert in the coming days.
‘It is concerning that this has taken place and what we’re concerned about is copycats and we might have another one,’ he told GB News.
‘If you do see something, report suspicious behaviour, this is advice given out by police this week. Or even better, report the people who are perhaps going off the rails.’
Phillips added that the government should still allow Christmas markets to go ahead otherwise the ‘terrorists have won’.
German authorities have responded to the threat by increasing the police presence at festive events in Berlin.
The city’s interior minister Iris Spranger said on X: ‘The security authorities are in close contact with each other.
‘As a precaution, the Berlin police will increase their presence at the city’s Christmas markets.’
This comes after a suspect believed to have been behind the wheel of the BMW that slammed into the bustling crowd in Magdeburg was arrested.
Footage showed his arrest at gunpoint by German police moments after the attack on Friday evening.
A toddler is among the people who were killed in the assault, while more than 40 people are in critical condition and fighting for their lives.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters earlier today, while visiting the scene: ‘There is no more peaceful, more joyous place in Germany than Christmas markets when people come together ahead of the Christmas festival and spend some time together, drink mulled wine, have a sausage together to relax together.
‘What for a terrible act is that, to injure and to kill so many people with such brutality.’
Scholz added: ‘For me it is important that when such a terrible, awful event happens, a terrible attack in which so many people were injured and killed, almost on the anniversary of the Breitscheidplatz terror attack in Berlin, that we as a country stay together and stick together.
The chancellor was referring to another ramming attack on a Christmas market in 2016 that left a dozen people dead.
In the last decade, Germany has suffered multiple such grim events with a vehicle.
It was in December 2020 that a 51-year-old man deliberately drove his SUV through a holiday shopping street near a Christmas market in the western German city of Trier, killing five people including a nine-week-old baby girl.
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