At least one killed when car drives into a crowd in Germany’s Mannheim

At least one person has been killed and others injured when a car rammed into a crowd in the western German city of Mannheim, police say as they ask the public to stay away from the downtown area.

Police spokesperson Stefan Wilhelm said a driver on Monday drove into a group of people in Paradeplatz, a square in a pedestrianised area of Mannheim.

He said “several” people were injured but police could not yet specify how many were hurt or how badly they were hurt.

“We can confirm that one perpetrator was arrested,” he said. “We can’t yet give information on whether there were further perpetrators.”

A reporter at the scene for German news channel NTV said that “at least one person is lying covered under a tarpaulin” and that children’s shoes were scattered in the debris scattered on the ground.

Paradeplatz, a major square in the downtown area, lies at the end of a pedestrianised street in Mannheim, which has a population of 326,000 and is 85km (52 miles) south of Frankfurt.

Mannheim University Hospital said it has prepared for a possible mass casualty incident, the German news agency dpa reported. The hospital has implemented its disaster and emergency plan to prepare for the care of the injured.

Local authorities have also pushed an alert on the Katwarn app telling people in Mannheim to avoid the city’s downtown area due to a big police deployment. Katwarn is used by officials to communicate information about major emergencies such as thunderstorms, attacks or fires.

The incident comes a day after Mannheim’s street parade which is a part of Germany’s carnival celebrations. Across the country, lots of people have taken a long weekend off to celebrate carnival, including Rose Monday, when many cities hold parades.

Authorities were however on high alert as Monday is one of the main days of the traditional carnival celebrations before the beginning of Lent.

German cities have seen several violent attacks recently, including stabbing sprees and car ramming attacks blamed on asylum seekers.

Last month a man drove a car into a trade union demonstration in the southern city of Munich, killing a two-year-old girl and her mother.

In December a car-ramming attack targeted a Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg, killing six people and wounding hundreds.

Mannheim itself was the scene of a stabbing attack at an anti-Islam rally last May in which a policeman was killed and five others wounded.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Monday before the incident in Mannheim that festivities were taking place “with high security precautions”.

She has cancelled her visit to the Rose Monday parade in Cologne to travel to Mannheim.