News / Germany

Stolen truck crashes into cars in Germany, 9 wounded

Tuesday, 08 October 2019 8:30 AM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 08 October 2019 8:36 AM ]

The picture shows the scene — cordoned off by police — where a stolen truck crashed into cars at a red light in Limburg, western Germany, on October 7, 2019. (By AFP)

A man has driven a stolen truck into several cars in the center of the city of Limburg in western Germany, injuring some nine people, police say.

A white articulated truck crashed into a line of about nine cars that had stopped at a traffic light in Limburg in Hesse State late on Monday, pushing them into each other.

Police said “around nine people were slightly injured,” including the driver of the truck.

The site of the incident was cordoned off by police, and tow trucks removed the damaged cars.

Police further said the driver had been arrested, and the motive behind the attack was not known yet.

“We currently do not have sufficient information about what was behind it,” police said.

The truck had been stolen earlier in the day. The original driver of the truck said a man with short dark hair and a full beard, estimated to be in his 30s, forced him out of the vehicle and “didn’t say a word.”

The daily Frankfurter Neue Presse (FNP) reported that when the driver of the truck spoke Arabic, but that account was unconfirmed.

German authorities called on social media users not to make hasty conclusions on the motive.

“We are not ruling anything out,” the German news agency DPA quoted a spokesman for the state police force as saying. “But we call on you: don’t take part in speculation!”

Over the past few years, Germany has suffered several attacks of terrorist nature both from elements of its far-right, nationalist groups and people believed to have links to the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group. The deadliest such attack took place in 2016 when a Tunisian man stole a truck and drove it into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people.

In April, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic security watchdog, warned of an increased risk posed by homegrown Daesh militants returning from Syria and northern Iraq. Its director, Thomas Haldenwang, said that an estimated 2,240 such militants with “terrorist potential” were living in Germany.

Extremists from across Europe joined Daesh in 2014, when the terrorist group launched its terrorist campaign in Iraq and Syria.

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