NYPD will increase vacation market patrols after Magdeburg Germany incident

The NYPD is sending extra assets to vacation markets throughout New York Metropolis following a suspected assault at a Christmas market in Germany that left not less than two individuals useless and injured dozens of others, in keeping with a senior NYPD official.

The police division already had elevated safety at vacation markets as a precaution and can now ramp that up additional, the official tells Information 4.

There had been some threats to markets abroad this yr, however no particular risk data was current for markets in New York Metropolis or the US, in keeping with the supply. The supply careworn the NYPD’s newest actions are being completed strictly as a precaution.

The elevated police presence comes after a automotive plowed right into a busy out of doors Christmas market within the jap German metropolis of Magdeburg on Friday, killing not less than two individuals and injuring not less than 60 others in what authorities suspect was an assault.

The motive force of the automotive was arrested shortly after the automotive barreled into the market at round 7 p.m., when it was busy with vacation buyers trying ahead to the weekend. The suspect is a 50-year-old Saudi physician who first got here to Germany in 2006, Saxony-Anhalt’s inside minister, Tamara Zieschang, mentioned at a information convention.

“As issues stand, he’s a lone perpetrator, in order that so far as we all know there isn’t any additional hazard to town,” Saxony-Anhalt’s governor, Reiner Haseloff, advised reporters.

The NYPD and FBI have been briefed on the incident in Germany. Along with the ramped up police presence at vacation markets in New York Metropolis as a precaution, the NYPD can even be including officers to different high-profile places throughout town, in keeping with a senior police official.

An identical enhance in police presence at NYC markets was seen in 2016 after a truck plowed right into a crowd at a Christmas market in Berlin.

Fifteen of the injured in Germany had been had been harm very significantly, in keeping with authorities officers and town authorities’s web site.

Haseloff mentioned the 2 individuals who had been confirmed to have died had been an grownup and a toddler, however that he couldn’t rule out additional deaths.

“However that’s hypothesis now. Each human life that has fallen sufferer to this assault is a horrible tragedy and one human life too many,” he mentioned.

Magdeburg’s College Hospital mentioned it was caring for 10 to twenty sufferers however was getting ready for extra, dpa reported.

The suspected assault in Magdeburg, a metropolis of about 240,000 individuals that’s west of Berlin and is the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt, got here eight years after an Islamic extremist drove a truck into crowded Christmas market within the German capital, killing 13 individuals and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Christmas markets are an enormous a part of German tradition as an annual vacation custom cherished because the Center Ages and efficiently exported to a lot of the Western world. In Berlin alone, greater than 100 markets opened late final month and introduced the smells of mulled wine, roasted almonds and bratwurst to the capital. Different markets abound throughout the nation.

German Inside Minister Nancy Faeser mentioned late final month that there have been no concrete indications of a hazard to Christmas markets this yr, however that it was sensible to be vigilant.

Hours after Friday’s suspected assault, the sound of sirens clashed with the market’s vacation decorations, together with ornaments, stars and leafy garland festooning the distributors’ cubicles.

“It’s a horrible tragedy — it is a disaster for town of Magdeburg and for the state, and for German usually as properly,” Haseloff mentioned. “It’s actually one of many worst issues one can think about, significantly in reference to what a Christmas market ought to convey.”

Chancellor OIaf Scholz posted on X: “My ideas are with the victims and their family. We stand beside them and beside the individuals of Magdeburg.”