BERLIN (AP) 鈥� A driver rammed a car into a crowd Monday in the southwestern German city of Mannheim, and authorities said two people were killed and several others injured.
A 40-year-old German from the nearby state of Rhineland-Palatinate was detained and in a hospital after being injured, State Interior Minister Thomas Strobl of Baden-W眉rttemberg, where Mannheim is based, told German news agency dpa.
Police would not immediately characterize the incident as an attack. Cars in several acts of violence in recent months in Germany.
Police said earlier that 鈥渋ndications of a second perpetrator cannot be confirmed at this stage of the investigation.鈥� They said there was no more danger to the public.
Police spokesperson Stefan Wilhelm said a driver drove into people on Paradeplatz, a pedestrian street downtown, around noon, when workers come for lunch breaks. Local media reported a carnival market was taking place, meaning more visitors than usual in Mannheim, with a population of 326,000.
Mannheim University Hospital said they were treating three people, two adults and a child, dpa reported. It was not immediately clear whether other hospitals received patients.
Images from the scene showed parts of the downtown area cordoned off, with a heavy police presence. Officers gathered round a badly damaged black car.
Last month, a died two days after they were injured in a on a union demonstration in Munich. A 24-year-old Afghan man who came to Germany as an asylum-seeker was arrested, and prosecutors said he appeared to have an Islamic extremist motive.
Last year, six people were killed and more than 200 injured when a in the eastern city of Magdeburg. , is a 50-year-old doctor originally from Saudi Arabia who had expressed anti-Muslim views and support for the
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Associated Press writers Geir Moulson and Kirsten Grieshaber contributed.
Stefanie Dazio, The Associated Press
