Germany mourns Christmas market dead

MAGDEBURG, GERMANY:

The Saudi suspect in Germany's deadly car-ramming attack on a Christmas market held strongly anti-Islam views and was angry with Germany's migrant policy, official said Saturday.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the "terrible, insane" attack that killed five people and shocked the nation, days before Christmas and eight years after a jihadist drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin.

Police were puzzling over the motive of Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, the top suspect after an SUV ploughed at high speed through a dense crowd Friday, also injuring 205 people in the eastern city of Magdeburg.

The mass carnage sparked sorrow and revulsion, with a nine-year-old child among the dead and casualties being treated in 15 regional hospitals.

Germany has been hit by multiple deadly jihadist attacks, but evidence gathered by investigators and his past online posts painted a different picture of Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old doctor of psychiatry.

A self-described "Saudi atheist" who as an activist who helped women flee the oil-rich kingdom, he has railed against Islam but also against what he saw as Germany's permissive attitude towards refugees from other mainly Muslim countries.

Interior Minister Nancy Fraser said he held "Islamophobic" views, and a prosecutor said that "the background to the crime... could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany".

Taha Al-Hajji of the Berlin-based European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights told AFP Abdulmohsen was "a psychologically disturbed person with an exaggerated sense of self-importance".

Abdulmohsen in his online posts spoke about his troubles with and suspicions of German authorities.

Last August, he posted on social media: "Is there a path to justice in Germany without blowing up a German embassy or randomly slaughtering German citizens? ... If anyone knows it, please let me know."

Die Welt daily reported, citing security sources, that German state and federal police had carried out a "risk assessment" on him last year but concluded that he posed "no specific danger".

A sombre Scholz, dressed in black, visited the attack site Saturday together with national and regional politicians laying flowers outside the main church in Magdeburg.

Mourning and bereaved residents have left candles, flowers, cards and children's toys at the Johanneskirche church, where a memorial service was planned at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT).

Scholz pledged the state would respond "with the full force of the law" to the attack but also called for unity as Germany has been rocked by a heated debate on immigration and security ahead of elections in February.

The centre-left chancellor said it was important "that we stick together, that we link arms, that it is not hatred that determines our coexistence but the fact that we are a community that seeks a common future."