When the incident occurred, Magdeburg’s football team were playing against Fortuna Dusseldorf.

After the game finished, the team’s players united in a line in front of their supporters. A statement from the club said its “thoughts are with those affected by the terrible events and the Magdeburg Christmas market”.

Meanwhile, a minute’s silence was held at the end of a match between Bayern and RB Leipzig in Munich.

Friday’s incident is not the first time people at a Christmas market have been attacked in Germany.

In 2016, Anis Amri, a Tunisian man who failed to gain asylum in Germany and had links to the so-called Islamic State (IS) group, drove a truck into crowds gathered at a church market in Berlin, killing 12 and injuring 49 others.

Two years later, a gunman opened fire on a Christmas market in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, killing five and injuring another 11 people. The gunman was shot dead by police two days later.

Only last month, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser talked about the need for “greater vigilance” at the highly popular markets – but said there were no “concrete” indications of danger.

She also reportedly pointed to tougher laws on weapons in public spaces following a knife attack in Solingen, west Germany, in August in which three people died – an incident which reignited an already fraught debate on asylum and migration in Germany.