A man has been arrested after setting fire to two residential buildings and then crashing a car into two stores in Essen, Germany.
A total of 30 people are said to have been seriously injured, including several children. Two of the children are critically injured.
The alarms about the two fires came in shortly after each other on Saturday evening. Shortly afterwards, the car crashed into two stores and the driver threatened people around him with a weapon. He could, however, be held back by people on the scene using shovels and poles until the police arrived.
The man arrested is a Syrian man in his 40s. According to the police, family reasons lay behind the man's actions.