(Deutsche Welle) German security forces faced a series of difficult questions at Saturday’s press conference in Magdeburg. Friday night’s attack, in which Talib A.*, a 50-year-old Saudi man, rammed a car into a crowd at a busy Christmas market in the Saxony-Anhalt capital, left five people dead and 200 more injured.
As senior police officers and city officials faced the press, some reporters grew impatient with the lack of clear answers to their questions: How could police fail to protect the Christmas market? How come apparent warnings from Saudi authorities were not heeded? How did disturbing social media posts by the suspected perpetrator fail to raise alarm bells?
Just two days later, many of these questions clearly remained difficult to answer, though consequences have already been drawn: Federal and state police forces convened a conference on Saturday morning, agreeing to increase police presences and reassess safety measures at the many hundreds of Christmas markets across the country.
