A car ramming into a crowded Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, has reignited safety concerns and serves as a stark reminder of previous attacks on Christmas markets across Europe, including attacks in Berlin, Strasbourg, and other cities in recent years.
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A car drove into a crowded outdoor Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, killing at least five people and injuring more than 200.
Similar attacks have targeted Christmas markets in other cities, including the 2018 attack in Strasbourg, France, where five people were killed and several more were injured, as well as incidents in Nantes, France, and other cities in Germany.
Ensuring the safety of Christmas markets has been a heightened concern since 2016, when an Islamist extremist drove a truck into a crowd at a Berlin Christmas market, killing 13 people and injuring dozens more.
Christmas markets are popular in Germany and the country hosts an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 Christmas markets each year, running for approximately a month from late November until shortly after Christmas.
Timeline of major attacks on Christmas markets in Europe:
Germany has recently seen a series of suspected Islamist knife attacks.
In August, three people were killed and eight others injured during a stabbing spree at a street festival in the western city of Solingen.
Authorities arrested a Syrian suspect in connection with the attack, which was later claimed by IS.
In June, a police officer lost his life in a knife attack in Mannheim, with an Afghan national identified as the main suspect.