About 30 people, including children, were injured Monday when a car drove into a crowd of Mardi Gras festival-goers in Hesse, Germany.
Police arrested a 29-year-old man in connection with the incident, which happened around 2:45 p.m., German time. The suspect is identified as a resident of Volkmarsen.
According to the General Prosecutor General's Office in Frankfurt and Hessian police, some of the victims were seriously injured and are receiving treatment at local hospitals.
The suspect was also injured in the incident.
Police have not released a motive for the incident, and no casualties have been reported.
Police stold the dpa news agency aid it wasn't yet clear whether the driver had suffered some sort of a medical issue, if there was a mechanical problem with the car or whether the vehicle was intentionally driven into the crowd.
Video from the scene showed a silver Mercedes station wagon with local license plates and its hazard lights blinking on a sidewalk, while emergency crews walked by. The crash occurred on the south side of the town, outside a supermarket.
The crash came amid the height of Germany's celebration of Carnival, with the biggest parades in Cologne, Duesseldorf and Mainz. Several cities in western Germany canceled their traditional Carnival parades at short notice on Sunday because of inclement weather.
Credit: Uwe Zucchi
Credit: Uwe Zucchi
Volkmarsen, which has a population of 7,000, is east of Duesseldorf, near Kassel.
Police shut down the area to allow emergency crews to deal with the crash. Police said they couldn't immediately provide further details and urged people not to spread “unconfirmed reports" about the crash.
The regional Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper reported that witnesses said the driver drove around a barrier blocking off traffic from the parade, but that it wasn't yet clear whether he intentionally headed toward the crowd.
Hesse is a central German state known for forests and Wiesbaden, a Roman spa town and now the state's capital city.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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