Ten people were injured on Feb. 24 after a car plowed into a carnival parade in the western German town of Volkmarsen, police said, adding that the driver had been arrested.
Henning Hinn from the police headquarters in Northern Hesse confirmed on Monday evening that the driver is a 29-year-old from the Volkmarsen region. He also confirmed that the driver deliberately drove into the crowd, according to the German news website HNA.
The police also confirmed that several people have been injured but no death has been reported yet.
HNA cited witnesses as saying the driver appeared to have deliberately targeted children and had driven into the crowd “at full throttle.”
The incident comes less than a week after a man gunned down 11 people, including himself, in one of the worst racist attacks in Germany since World War Two.
Police cars and ambulances rushed to the scene in Volkmarsen, a small town in northern Hesse, 263 miles (423 km) west of Berlin.
Dirk Richter, police spokesman in the nearby city of Kassel told Welt TV: “Everything we have available from the Kassel area is there.”
Carnival is hugely popular in parts of western Germany, especially in Rhineland cities such as Cologne and Duesseldorf, where festivities peak on “Rose Monday” with tens of thousands attending street parades featuring comical or satirical floats.
Amateur pictures published online showed police officers standing next to a silver Mercedes-Benz car that appeared to have been involved in the incident.
German media said the driver deliberately broke through plastic barriers set up by police around the parade area.
Reuters contributed to this report.
