let's speak now to the eu counterterror expert, international security and policing professor at theity of south wales. thanks for coming on the program. >> thanks for having me. lewis: could i get your initial thoughts, initial response? >> this is very clearly a horrific attack on a symbol of the christmas time period, it christmas market attack in magdeburg. there are likely to be a number of people dead. what has been confirmed so far in the german media is one person but speculations are much higher than that. possibly up to 10 or more people that have been killed. we don't know for sure but we know the attacker has been arrested. the background, there is some speculation about it in social media, so i don't want to comment on it yet, but it looks to be potentially an islamist attack. so it is a very worrying development. lewis: as you pointed out, we should underline, we don't have any confirmation of the type of attack or motive. that is yet unknown. we are working to establish that. could you talk us through the history here? an attack with a vehicle on a christmas market mig

let's bring back in now christian, eu counterterror expert and international security and policing professorhat you will be waiting for, listening out for? one of the kind of questions that you still have right now? i think there is lot of questions at the moment. at this particular moment, obscenely want and move no more examine how the attack occurred. we to have it confirmed of course who is behind it. i'm reading at the moment as we are talking some your immediate reporting suggesting that it could have been a saudi citizen but we need to have that confirmed obviously to see whether that is indeed the case. we need to understand of course the motive and i think the implications of this attack are going to be huge. the applications in terms of sheer casualties. the implications in terms of the casualties, they look very significant indeed. the implications in terms of trauma that people are going to undergo at this particular moment because it 1517 00:09