Driver Plows Into Pedestrians in Berlin

A car drove into a crowd of people in a busy shopping district in western Berlin on Wednesday, killing at least one person and leaving five with life-threatening injuries.

More than a dozen people were injured when the driver plowed into people on Kurfuerstendamm avenue, near the landmark Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, at around 10:30 a.m. local time, a police spokesman said.

The small silver Renault continued toward Tauentzienstrasse, a tree-lined street popular with tourists, before veering off the road and crashing through a glass shop window, the spokesman, Thilo Cablitz, said.

“A man is believed to have driven into a group of people. It is not yet known whether it was an accident or a deliberate act,” Berlin police said on Twitter, adding that the driver was being held at the scene.

Police said that the driver, a 29-year-old German-Armenian national, is being questioned.

Berlin Shliach and Chief Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal visited the scene of the violent incident to comfort the victims and remarked that he had only recently placed a Mezuzah on the door of a building nearby.

“We pray for those injured that G-d gives them a quick and speedy recovery,” said Rabbi Teichtal. “We are monitoring the situation very closely, and we will see how it develops,” he said. “With the help of G-d, there will be good news here.”