Suspect in Christmas market attack railed vs Islam, Germany

MAGDEBURG (AFP) - 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 and asylum policy, officials said on Saturday.

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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 main suspect after an SUV ploughed at high speed through a dense crowd in the eastern city of Magdeburg on Friday.

As well as killing five people, the vehicle wounded 205 others. A nine-year-old child was among the dead and casualties were 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.

In an unpublished interview with AFP from 2022 for an unrelated story, Abdulmohsen presented himself as "a Saudi atheist."