One dead, eight injured after driver hits pedestrians in Berlin

Rescue workers help an injured person after a car crashed into a crowd of people in central Berlin, Germany. Photo / AP

A man drove a car into pedestrians in a popular Berlin shopping district today, killing at least one person and injuring at least eight others, rescue services said.

The man drove into people on a street corner at around 10:30 am local time before getting the car back on the road and then crashing into a shop window around a block further on, police spokesman Thilo Cablitz said.

Five people sustained life-threatening injuries and another three were seriously injured, fire service spokesman Adrian Wenzel told n-tv television. Police said more than a dozen people were injured.

A car has crashed into a store after crashing into a crowd of people in central Berlin. Photo / AP

The driver was apparently detained by passers-by before being arrested swiftly by a police officer who was near the scene, Cablitz said. He said police are trying to determine whether he deliberately drove into pedestrians or whether it was an accident, possibly caused by a medical emergency.

Police later tweeted that the driver was a 29-year-old German-Armenian who lives in Berlin. They didn't give further details, and it wasn't immediately clear what if anything he had told them in questioning.

Large numbers of rescue vehicles and first responders were at the scene.

A car crashed into a crowd of people in central Berlin, Germany. Photo / AP

Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey tweeted that she was "deeply shocked by this incident."

The incident happened at one end of the Kurfuerstendamm shopping boulevard and next to the Breitscheidplatz square, where an extremist carried out a vehicle attack on a Christmas market in 2016, resulting in 13 deaths.

In a 2019 incident in central Berlin, an SUV plowed into a group of pedestrians, killing four people. The driver had suffered an epileptic seizure and veered onto the sidewalk.