Police in Mannheim have ordered people to avoid the city center following the incident.
One person is dead and several others are injured after a car was driven into a crowd of pedestrians in Mannheim, Germany, police said Monday.
A statement on the city’s police’s website said: “According to the current status of the investigation, one person was killed, and several people were injured. No information can be given yet on the number and severity of the injuries.”
Police added that one suspect had been arrested and later confirmed that they believed no other suspects were at large.
Eyewitnesses described people lying on the ground at the scene and at least two being resuscitated.
The car, described by witnesses as a black SUV, was driven into a crowd at Paradeplatz, a major square in the downtown area that lies at the end of a pedestrianized street, police said.
The incident occurred as crowds gathered in cities across western Germany’s Rhineland for parades to mark the beginning of carnival season.
Security has been a top concern in Germany with police on high alert for this year’s carnival parades after social media accounts linked to the ISIS terrorist group called for attacks on the events in Cologne and Nuremberg.
Mannheim has a population of 326,000 and lies about 52 miles south of Frankfurt.
It comes just weeks after an Afghan national drove a car into a crowd of protesters marching in Munich on Feb. 13.
That attack claimed the lives of two people, a 37-year-old woman and her 2-year-old daughter, as well as injuring 39 others.
In December last year, six people were killed and more than 200 injured after a car slammed into a Christmas market in Magdeburg.
In that case, the suspect, who was arrested, is a 50-year-old doctor originally from Saudi Arabia who had expressed anti-Islam views.
In May, a police officer was killed, and a local politician was wounded during a stabbing attack in Mannheim.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
