Ten people were injured on Monday after a car ploughed into a carnival parade in the western German town of Volkmarsen, police said, adding that the driver had been arrested.
Police declined to say if it was an accident or if the driver had deliberately rammed the car into the crowd.
German news website HNA cited witnesses as saying the driver appeared to have deliberately targeted children and had driven into the crowd “at full throttle”.
The incident comes less than a week after a man gunned down 11 people, including himself, in one of the worst racist attacks in Germany since Second World War.
Police cars and ambulances rushed to the scene in Volkmarsen, a small town in northern Hesse, 263 miles, 423km west of Berlin.
Dirk Richter, police spokesman in the nearby city of Kassel told Welt TV: “Everything we have available from the Kassel area is there.”
Carnival is hugely popular in western Germany, especially in Rhineland cities such as Cologne and Duesseldorf, where festivities peak on “Rose Monday” with thousands attending street parades featuring comical or satirical floats.
German media said the driver deliberately broke through plastic barriers around the parade area.
