State Interior Minister Thomas Strobl of Baden-Württemberg, where Mannheim is based, told German news agency dpa that a 40-year-old German from the nearby state of Rhineland-Palatinate was detained and in a hospital after being injured.
Two persons have died after a car rammed into crowd in Germany's Mannheim. The police in the western German city have taken one suspect to custody as part of their investigation and asked the public to stay away from the downtown area and keep inside their homes.
State Interior Minister Thomas Strobl of Baden-Württemberg, where Mannheim is based, told German news agency dpa that a 40-year-old German from the nearby state of Rhineland-Palatinate was detained and in a hospital after being injured. Several other have also been injured in the incident, Mannheim University Hospital that they were treating three people, two adults and a child, dpa reported.
The police initially did not disclose what prompted the large law enforcement presence in the city centre but a spokesperson said the incident had been reported as “a life-threatening deployment situation.”
Cars have been used as deadly weapons in several acts of violence in recent months in Germany.
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.
According to Associated Press, the authorities pushed an alert on the Katwarn app telling people in Mannheim to avoid the city's downtown area due to a big police deployment.
Officials use Katwarn to communicate information about major emergencies such as thunderstorms, militant attacks or fires.
Mannheim is a city of about 300,000 people located south of Frankfurt.
According to reports, the crowd had gathered in several cities across Germany for parades for the ongoing carnival season.
Last month, a 2-year-old girl and her mother died two days after they were injured in a car-ramming attack 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 car slammed into a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg. The suspect, who was arrested, is a 50-year-old doctor originally from Saudi Arabia who had expressed anti-Muslim views and support for the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative For Germany party.