One person was killed and several others injured when a man drove a car into a lunch-hour crowd in the southwestern German city of Mannheim, the police said on Monday.
The police said the driver had been arrested, and that they were investigating whether other perpetrators had been involved.
Details about the driver were not released. The police did not say whether they believed the crash was deliberate, and they asked people to refrain from sharing video of the incident and the subsequent investigation on social media. The police did not say how many people had been injured.
The authorities asked people to avoid the city center on Monday.
There have been several recent attacks with vehicles in Germany. Two weeks ago, a 24-year-old Afghan man who was seeking asylum intentionally drove into a union demonstration in Munich, killing a 2-year-old and her mother and wounding several dozen others.
And in December, a Saudi doctor who had been living in Germany for more than a decade was suspected of having driven his car into a Christmas market in the central city of Magdeburg, killing six people and injuring hundreds of others.
In Mannheim, the driver reportedly entered a pedestrian-only stretch of the city center from its landmark water tower and drove roughly 700 yards toward the square known as Paradeplatz. The incident occurred at about 12:15 p.m., according to the police, when lunchtime crowds were enjoying unseasonably warm weather.
Detached pieces of the car could be seen along the vehicle’s path, media reports.
A day earlier, a parade with 70 floats and 2,500 participants passed through the same zone in an annual carnival celebration. The police said about 250,000 people had attended.
Mannheim, which has a population of about 320,000, was in the headlines last year when an Afghan citizen living in Germany stabbed people at a far-right demonstration, killing a police officer who had rushed in to stop the attack.
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