ReutersA woman who was with her boyfriend at the Christmas market in Magdeburg told local media that she was holding her boyfriend in her arms when the car used in the attack approached them.
“He was hit and pulled away from my side. It was terrible,” Nadine, 32, told Bild newspaper.
Footage published in German media shows a black car plowing into a crowd of people at high speed and continuing to move forward for hundreds of meters.
Nadine's boyfriend is said to have leg and head injuries.
Another eyewitness, Gianni Varzecha, told the BBC he was listening to Christmas music in the market with his girlfriend's family when “suddenly there was a rumble and the sound of broken glass”.
“People started to panic,” he said. “I saw the car and the people on the floor, people covered in blood. There were also children.
“I concentrated on giving first aid to people. It took a few minutes for the first paramedics to arrive, but it wasn't enough because there were already 200 injured.
“Most of the first aid was given by people there.
Lars Frommüller, a reporter for public broadcaster MDR who arrived at Magdeburg's Christmas market shortly after the attack, told the BBC what he saw.
“There were ambulances everywhere, there were police, there were a lot of firefighters.
“It was a really chaotic situation. We saw blood on the floor, we saw people sitting side by side and carrying gold and silver foil around them. We also saw many doctors trying to warm people up and help them with their injuries.
“It's a big shock. It's a big shock to every person here in Magdeburg and to every person in Saxony-Anhalt.”
Tobias Rausch, who was at the Christmas market and is general secretary of Germany's far-right AfD party in Saxony-Anhalt, told Reuters it was scary.
Rausch said he had not reached the market when “all of a sudden we heard a muffled noise, the roar of an engine.”
“People were screaming. It all happened in a split second.”
Once out of harm's way, Rausch said he was able to film the moment police took the suspect into custody.
Local authorities told a news conference that fellow citizens provided vital first aid to the injured in the moments before emergency services arrived at the scene.
ReutersOne Magdeburg resident, Heike Jahnke, was at the Christmas market on Friday and left around 18:00 local time (17:00 GMT), roughly an hour before the attack.
“We could have been hit,” Ms Jahnke told Reuters as she lit a candle for those involved in the tragedy. She said she felt horrified by what had happened, “somehow you just can't believe it”.
She was joined by many other local residents who brought flowers and candles to a church near where the attack took place.
Corina Pagels, a local resident and consultant, said she was at the market herself early Friday. She said the community's healing begins now.
“Of course it gets to you and we have to process things as well and luckily we have a good network and we're also there to provide aftercare for the rescuers and firefighters and support them in the aftermath. So the real work begins now.”