MAGDEBURG – Magdeburg has been enveloped in grief since an attack that killed a nine-year-old boy and four women at a Christmas market last Friday evening. About 200 people were also injured when a man rammed a car into the busy market in the eastern German city. The suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year old Saudi-born psychiatrist who has lived in Germany since 2006, faces accusations of murder and attempted murder. Political parties across the spectrum have expressed sorrow for the victims and promised to step up security.

In a statement shared with Al Jazeera, Greens party leader Robert Habeck said he wished the city “comfort, strength and confidence”. Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the incident a “terrible and insane” act. Nicole Anger, a lawmaker and co-chairwoman of Die Linke (The Left) party in Magdeburg, said the city remains quiet and people are still stunned. “There are candlelight vigils, services and just a lot of moments of people standing together in solidarity. The salesmen from the Christmas market, which is closed for the rest of the year, have been giving away fruits and vegetables for free,” she told Al Jazeera.

But while many are united in grief, tensions are growing. Alongside vigils, more than 2,000 far-right supporters bearing banners and chanting slogans against migration gathered in the city on Saturday. Anger, who was born and raised in Magdeburg, said the atmosphere reminded her of the mid-1990s when one man was killed after far-right agitators chased a group of Black men through the city in what has come to be known as Himmelfahrtskrawalle, or the Magdeburg Ascension Day riots. “At the moment, children and people with a migration background are scared to be out on the streets,” she said.

The attack took place as Germans prepared to close off a heated political year.

After the coalition led by Scholz collapsed in November, the chancellor then lost a confidence vote in mid-December, triggering snap elections. Germans will head to the polls on February 23.

Meanwhile, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party continues to gain political ground after successes in state elections this year. The day before the attack, US billionaire Elon Musk stirred controversy by posting on the X social media platform he owns: “Only the AfD can save Germany.” “We still have to be very cautious about what the attacker’s real motives were. But what is obvious is that if there is an extremist force in the political discourse which is actually not only Islamophobic but generally phobic against any foreigners, if this is articulated in this strong way as the AfD is constantly doing, it trickles down,” said Justus von Daniels, editor of the German publication Correctiv, which in January broke the news of a meeting between the AfD and neo-Nazi activists to discuss a migrant deportation “master plan”. (Al Jazeera)

Photo: Far-right demonstrators take part in a protest after a man drove a car into a crowded Christmas market, in Magdeburg. (Reuters)

BEIRUT –  Two former Israeli intelligence agents have revealed how members of the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah used Israeli made walkie-talkies booby-trapped with explosives for 10 years before they were detonated in a surprise attack in September this year. The two ex-Mossad agents told US CBS News how the service duped Hezbollah into buying thousands of rigged walkie-talkies and pagers without realising they were made in Israel. Dozens of people were killed and thousands injured in the attacks. Israel said it was tailored to target only Hezbollah members, but civilians were among victims, Lebanese officials said.

The UN human rights chief called the attack a war crime. At the time of the attack, Israel and Hezbollah were fighting a conflict which had spiralled since Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions a day after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel 7 October 2023. On 17 September 2024, thousands of pagers simultaneously exploded across Lebanon, mainly in areas with a strong Hezbollah presence. The blasts wounded or killed users and some people nearby, spreading panic and confusion. The following day walkie-talkies exploded in the same way, killing and injuring hundreds more.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel was responsible two months later, Israeli media reported at the time. In an interview with the BBC’s US broadcast partner, the two former agents divulged details of the operation. One of the agents, given the name Michael, said Mossad had concealed an explosive device inside the batteries operating the walkie-talkies, which he said would typically be carried in a vest nearer the wearer’s heart. He said Hezbollah had unwittingly bought over 16,000 the walkie-talkies at “a good price” from a fake company 10 years ago. “We have an incredible array of possibilities of creating foreign companies that have no way being traced back to Israel,” Michael said. “Shell companies over shell companies to affect the supply chain to our favour. “We create a pretend world. We are a global production company. We write the screenplay, we’re the directors, we’re the producers, we’re the main actors, and the world is our stage.”

The operation expanded two years ago to include pagers, CBS said. Mossad found that at that time Hezbollah was buying pagers from a Taiwanese company called Gold Apollo, it said. It set up a fake company which used the Gold Apollo name on pagers rigged with explosives, without the parent company realising.

CBS said Mossad put explosives inside powerful enough to hurt only the user. “We test everything triple, double, multiple times in order to make sure there is minimum damage,” said the second agent, whom the programme called Gabriel. It said Mossad specifically chose a ringtone which would sound urgent enough for someone to check in incoming message. Gabriel said the agency duped Hezbollah into buying the pagers, making advertising films and brochures, and sharing them on the internet. “When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad,” he said. “We make like [movie] Truman Show, everything is controlled by us behind the scene.” Hezbollah had bought 5,000 of the booby-trapped pagers by September 2024, CBS said. They were triggered from Israel when Mossad feared Hezbollah began to have suspicions, it said. (BBC/Reuters)

DAMASCUS  –  The British-born wife of deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is not seeking a divorce, a Kremlin spokesman has said. Reports in Turkish media had suggested Asma al-Assad wanted to end her marriage and leave Russia, where she and her husband were granted asylum after a rebel coalition overthrew the former president’s regime and took control of Damascus. Asked about the reports in a news conference call, Dmitry Peskov said, “No, they do not correspond to reality.” He also denied reports that Assad had been confined to Moscow and that his property assets had been frozen.

Russia was a staunch ally of the Assad regime and offered it military support during the civil war. But reports in Turkish media suggested last Sunday that the Assads were living under severe restrictions in the Russian capital, and that the former Syrian first lady had filed for divorce and wanted to return to London. Mrs Assad is a dual Syrian-British national, but the UK foreign secretary has previously said she would not be allowed to return to Britain.

Speaking in parliament earlier this month, David Lammy said: “I want it confirmed that she’s a sanctioned individual and is not welcome here in the UK.” He added he would do “everything I can in my power” to ensure no member of the Assad family “finds a place in the UK”. In a statement attributed to Bashar al-Assad last week, he said he had never intended to flee Syria, but he was airlifted from a Russian military base at Moscow’s request.

Asma al-Assad, 49, was born in the UK to Syrian parents in 1975 and grew up in Acton, west London. She moved to Syria in 2000 at the age of 25 and married her husband just months after he succeeded his father as president. Throughout her 24 years as Syria’s first lady, Mrs Assad was a subject of curiosity in western media.

A controversial 2011 Vogue profile called her “a rose in the desert” and described her as “the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies”. The article has since been removed from the Vogue website. Just one month later, Mrs Assad was criticised for remaining silent while her husband violently repressed pro-democracy campaigners at the start of the Syrian civil war. The conflict went on to claim the lives of around half a million people, with her husband accused of using chemical weapons against civilians.

In 2016, Mrs Assad told Russian state-backed television she had rejected a deal to offer her safe passage out of the war-torn nation in order to stand by her husband. She announced she was being treated for breast cancer in 2018 and said she had made a full recovery one year later. She was diagnosed with leukaemia and began treatment for the disease in May this year, the office of then-President Assad announced. A statement said she would “temporarily withdraw” from public engagements. (BBC)

Photo: Bashar al-Assad and his wife. (Reuters)