A baby is among the victims after at least two people were killed and 15 injured after a car drove at high speed into pedestrians in the German city of Trier, police say.
The incident happened on Tuesday in a pedestrianised area of the city centre, Mayor Wolfram Leibe said.
The 51-year-old driver, who is from the area, has been arrested and the large hatchback vehicle involved seized.
A regional official said a baby was among the victims.
Officials have not established a motive behind the attack, which comes on the same day Germany went into its second coronavirus lockdown.
A police spokesman said on Twitter that “several” people were killed in the incident, with local media reporting four dead, including a child.
The scene was flooded with armed officers, several ambulances and fire service personnel, while two helicopters circled overhead, Trierischer Volksfreund reported.
The mayor said at a news conference: “We have a driver who ran amok in the city. We have two dead that we are certain of and up to 15 injured, some of them with the most severe injuries.
“I just walked through the city centre and it was just horrible. There is a trainer lying on the ground, and the girl it belongs to is dead.”
An eyewitness told Trierischer Volksfreund that the vehicle drove from the city’s famous Roman gate – the Porta Nigra – along a shopping street towards the main market and then onto Fleischstrasse, where it hit several pedestrians.
Another told the newspaper they saw a pram fly through the air at the market before passers-by flooded into her shop trying to escape.
Police were finally able to stop the vehicle in nearby Christophstrasse, the eyewitness added.
A video on social media shows a number of police officers pinning a man to the ground next to a silver SUV, which appears to have been badly damaged by the impact of the crash.
Emergency services urged people to stay away from the city centre, where a large cordon is still in place.
Trier – the birthplace of Karl Marx – is around 120 miles west of Frankfurt, on the German border with Luxembourg.
It is four years since a terrorist drove a truck through a Christmas market in the German capital Berlin, killing 12 shoppers.
