Emergency services attended the incident. (AP: Dörthe Hein/dpa)
In short:
At least one person is dead and many more injured after a car was driven into a group of people at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, local media has reported.
The driver of the car was arrested and there has been no immediate information on whether people were killed or injured.
What's next?
Emergency services are on the scene to assist with the ongoing situation. The markets remain closed.
A car was driven into a group of people at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, German news agency dpa reported.
Local media reported there had been at least one dead and local rescue services said 60 to 80 people injured, AFP reported.
Local police said on X (Twitter) that "extensive police operations are currently taking place".
The local rescue service told AFP that an incident involving a car had left "several people severely injured".
Local media have reported that eyewitnesses saw a BMW drive into the crowd at around 7pm local time.
The driver of the car was arrested, the agency said, citing unidentified government officials in the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
Police officers and emergency services were on site, and the market manager had told people to leave the city centre, German broadcaster MDR said.
The driver of the car has been arrested following the incident. (AP: Dörthe Hein/dpa)
Eyewitnesses told the broadcaster that the car drove straight into the crowd at the market, in the direction of the town hall.
Magdeburg, which is west of Berlin, is the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt and has about 240,000 inhabitants.
“This is a terrible event, particularly now in the days before Christmas," Saxony-Anhalt president Reiner Haseloff said.
On December 19, 2016 in Berlin, an Islamic extremist attacker drove through a crowd of Christmas market-goers with a truck, leaving 13 people dead and injuring dozens more.
The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser had said late last month that there were no concrete indications of a danger to Christmas markets this year, but that it was wise to be vigilant.
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