On the 3rd of March at 12:15pm, in Mannheim, a 40 year-old man reportedly named 'Alexander S' drove his black Ford Fiesta at high speed through a crowd gathered on the Planken, a pedestrian boulevard.
The vehicle was seen driving for over quarter of a mile at speed and said to be a deliberate act. His target was the annual Fasnachtsmarkt, a Carnival market with food carts and rides for children. He deliberately ploughed into the market crowd, indiscriminately killing two people and maiming several more. He killed two people, one of them a woman and another a 50 year-old man. Among the seriously injured are five children, two of whom witnesses say lost their legs in the attack.
Alexander S. fled the scene in his Fiesta, and a taxi driver (Afzal M.) pursued him to the Spatzenbrücke, which leads across a Neckar canal. There, Alexander S. disembarked from his badly damaged car and fired a gas pistol at his pursuer before fleeing on foot.
Police arrested Alexander S. near the Mannheim harbour half an hour later. However, conflicting reports about how he subsequently injured before reaching custody are circulating. The official statement from Mannheim police say that he was shot by officers whilst attempting to escape, whilst unofficial reports say he shot himself in the mouth with a blank round. He is presently in hospital in critical condition. Police sources report to media that he is understood to suffer from psychological problems.
The owner of the Ford Fiesta used in the attack – very likely but not certainly Alexander S. himself – previously came to the notice of police “for displaying images of unconstitutional and terrorist organisation,,” at least one of them associated with “Right-wing extremism”
However, police later claim that the suspect had no political motivations for the attack. Reports in German media say: "Police do not suspect that Alexander S. had any political motivations for today’s attack." Was this because they found more left-wing content than right-wing?
What authorities are less inclined to admit is that this attack comes after ISIS linked social media accounts called for exactly such terrorist attacks on German markets during their carnival season.
Germany has had a string of violent attacks in recent weeks, including two near identical car rammings: one in Magdeburg in December and the other Munich last month, There have been several stabbing sprees in Markets too, including Mannheim in May 2024. Most of these are either dismissed as not terrorist related (even when the assailant shouts "ali akbar" during his arrest) or enacted by someone who is mentally ill.
German authorities were previously caught lying about the Magdeburg terrorist attack. On December 20, 2024, a man drove a car at 40 miles an hour into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, leaving five dead, including one child, and injuring over 200 more. The attacker, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, was a Saudi national who had claimed asylum in Germany in 2006. He was part of a Saudi 'sleeper cell' and was still in regular contact with the Saudi government according to German media.
However, German authorities labelled the incident as being one caused by mental illness, and the story was subsequently memory-holed.
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