Officials say five people have been killed, including a 9-year-old, after a Saudi doctor drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers in the German city of Magdeburg on Friday.

At least five people are now known to have been killed in the vehicle-ramming attack on a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg on Friday.

At least five people have been killed, and 200 injured, after car plowed into a busy outdoor Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday in what authorities called a deliberate attack.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said on Wednesday that he welcomed equal, dignified, healthy and orderly exchanges with China, but wondered whether there was goodwill from Beijing given what he said was their blocking of simple things like tourism.

The suspect in the car-ramming incident at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg had appeared in seven investigative proceedings in the two years prior to the attack, Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported on Saturday.

German prosecutors are commissioning a detailed mental evaluation of the suspected attacker behind a vehicle rampage through the crowded Magdeburg Christmas market that left five dead and more than 230 injured.