{"id":27681,"date":"2019-01-01T22:22:36","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T22:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27681"},"modified":"2019-01-01T22:22:36","modified_gmt":"2019-01-01T22:22:36","slug":"german-man-rams-car-into-crowd-in-racist-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27681","title":{"rendered":"German man rams car into crowd in &#8216;racist attack&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"105.574541284\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">A 50-year-old German man clearly intended to kill foreigners when he rammed his silver Mercedes into a crowd of people in the northwest German town of Bottrop in the early hours of New Year&#8217;s Day, injuring four, a senior government official said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Police said the man, who was not named, made racist comments when he was stopped and arrested in the nearby city of Essen after fleeing the scene of the attack.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">&#8220;A German man deliberately drove into crowds of people &#8230; that were largely made up of foreigners. There was a clear intention by this man to kill foreigners,&#8221; Herbert Reul, interior minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Bottrop is located, told reporters on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, police and prosecutors said they suspected the attack, which took place at a crowded plaza, was deliberate and &#8220;linked to the xenophobic views of the driver&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>They said there was also preliminary information that the man was mentally ill but he had no prior police record.<\/p>\n<p>A police spokeswoman said Syrian and Afghan citizens were among those injured, but gave no further details. She said one of the four people injured remained in hospital.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier the driver had steered his car at another pedestrian, who escaped unharmed, Reul said. He also targeted people at a bus stop after fleeing the scene of the Bottrop attack, but they were not injured, police said.<\/p>\n<p>Horst Seehofer, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/germany.html\">Germany<\/a>&#8216;s federal interior minister, told Bild newspaper the Bottrop case would be carefully investigated, along with an incident that occurred in Bavaria on Saturday in which four asylum-seekers were arrested on suspicion of attacking a dozen people.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is a matter of political credibility to pursue both cases decisively and aggressively,&#8221; he told the paper.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div readability=\"32\">\n<p>\n            SOURCE:<br \/>\n            <span>Reuters news agency<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A 50-year-old German man clearly intended to kill foreigners when he rammed his silver Mercedes into a crowd of people in the northwest German town of Bottrop in the early hours of New Year&#8217;s Day, injuring four, a senior government official said. Police said the man, who was not named, made racist comments when he&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":27682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}