Mannheim attack Germany latest: One dead and several injured after car rams into crowd in city centre

At least one person was killed and several injured after a car rammed into a crowd on a busy shopping street in the German city of Mannheim, police said.

One person has been arrested following the incident on a pedestrianised street, where a market had been erected to mark the carnival season. Several people were seen lying on the ground and two casualties were helped by emergency workers, an eyewitness told Reuters.

My colleague Alex Croft has more details in this report:

While police have not yet said whether today’s fatal incident in Mannheim was a deliberate attack, Germany has suffered multiple attacks in recent months.

Just last month, a two-year-old girl and her mother died after they were injured in a car-ramming attack on a union demonstration in Munich. A 24-year-old Afghan man who came to Germany as an asylum-seeker was arrested.

In August, three people were killed and eight others injured in a knife attack in Solingen. The suspect is Syrian and suspected to be an Isis supporter.

Last year, six people were killed and more than 200 injured when a car slammed into a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg. The suspect, is a 50-year-old doctor originally from Saudi Arabia who had expressed anti-Muslim views and support for the far-right Alternative For Germany party.

And in Mannheim last May, a police officer was killed in a stabbing at an anti-Islam rally. The trial of an Afghan suspect began last month.

The fatal incident took place as people in Germany were celebrating Rosenmontag (Rose Monday) – the culmination of the annual carnival season in Germany’s mainly Catholic western and southern regions.

The celebration features parades of floats that often include comical or satirical references to current affairs, with this year’s carnival including floats featuring figures such as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk and Volodymyr Zelensky.

Dressed in traditional jester costumes and sporting colourful makeup, thousands of partygoers danced through the streets of Cologne, Dusseldorf and other cities in western and southern Germany ahead of the fasting season of Lent.

Police spokesperson Stefan Wilhelm was quoted by Reuters as saying that “several” people were injured.

But police cannot yet specify how many people have been wounded, or how badly they are hurt.

Germany’s interior minister Nancy Faeser has cancelled her planned participation in a carnival street parade in Cologne due to the fatal incident in Mannheim.

“The focus is now on saving lives, treating the injured and the initial investigations by the authorities in Mannheim,” an interior ministry spokesperson told German news agency dpa.

Many people in Germany took a long weekend off to celebrate carnival, which includes Rose Monday – a day on which many cities hold parades.

Mannheim University Hospital says it has prepared everything for a possible mass casualty incident, German news agency dpa reported.

The hospital has implemented its disaster and emergency plan to prepare for the care of the injured.

A total of eight trauma teams have been made available, both for adults and children, dpa reported.

Police spokesperson Stefan Wilhelm said the incident had been reported as “a life-threatening deployment situation”.

“We can confirm that one perpetrator was arrested,” police spokesperson Stefan Wilhelm said.

“We can’t yet give information on whether there were further perpetrators.”

Earlier, a spokesperson said the incident had been reported as “a life-threatening deployment situation.”

Paradeplatz, a major square in the downtown area, lies at the end of a pedestrianised street in Mannheim.