German police after carnival accident (Reuters)
Berlin:
A driver plowed his car to a carnival parade in the western German city of Volkmarsen on Monday and injured 30 people, including children, some of whom were difficult, the police said on Monday.
The regional broadcaster Hessenschau said the police believed the driver, identified as a 29-year-old German citizen, had acted on purpose, but nothing was immediately known about his motive.
The German news website HNA quoted witnesses as saying that the man had apparently targeted children and went "at full throttle" into the crowd that had gathered for the traditional procession before Christian Lent.
When asked how many were injured, a police spokesman at the Kassel regional center said, "I would say about 30."
Police said on Twitter that some people, including children, were seriously injured. The Bild newspaper said a third of the injuries were serious and some life-threatening.
The police assumed the attack was on, but there was no evidence that he was politically motivated, Bild said.
As a precaution, the police have canceled all carnival parades in the German state of Hesse, where Volkmarsen is located, but said they were not aware of any other danger in Germany.
The incident occurs less than a week after a man shot 11 people, including himself, in one of the worst racist attacks in Germany since World War II.
Carnival is very popular in parts of West Germany, especially in Rhenish cities such as Cologne and Düsseldorf, where the celebrations culminate on "Rose Monday" and tens of thousands take part in street parades with comic or satirical floats.
Police cars and ambulances stormed the scene in Volkmarsen, a small town in northern Hesse, 420 km west of Berlin.
"We are on the spot with a lot of effort. An investigation is underway," the North Hessian police said on Twitter after the incident, which occurred around 2:45 p.m. (1345 GMT).
Amateur pictures published online showed police officers standing next to a silver Mercedes-Benz car that appeared to be involved.
German media said the driver had deliberately broken plastic barriers that the police had set up around Paradeplatz, where 1,500 people were expected to gather.
The car drove about 30 meters through the crowd before it came to a standstill, a witness told Hessenschau. The police could not question the driver for the time being, said the newspaper Welt, without going into more detail.
In 2016, a Tunisian with militant Islamist ties plowed a truck to a Christmas market in Berlin and killed 12 people. He was later shot by the Italian police after he fled Germany.
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