Drunken driver injures 28 at US Mardi Gras parade

A pickup truck driven by a man who appeared to be "highly intoxicated" plowed into a crowd of spectators watching the main Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans on Saturday, sending more than 20 people to the hospital, police said.

The truck, traveling along the side of the street open to traffic along the Mid-City parade route, struck three other vehicles, including a dump truck, before veering onto the median where a crowd of people stood watching the procession, according to New Orleans police.

Five people were being treated at hospital trauma centers, and an investigation is ongoing, police said.

Police immediately apprehended the pickup driver, who according to eyewitnesses interviewed by Fox television affiliate WVEU-TV appeared disheveled, glassy-eyed and under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Local media reports said 12 people were initially listed as critically injured.

Meanwhile in Germany, a man died and two other people were injured after a 35-year-old German man drove into a crowd standing near a bakery in the southwestern town of Heidelberg on Saturday, but the authorities said there were no indications that it was a terrorist attack.

According to the statement, the suspect was seen getting out of the car with a knife and was later tracked down to an old swimming pool. He was taken to a hospital in Heidelberg having been shot by police while being arrested, leaving him seriously injured.

The German authorities are on high alert after a failed Tunisian asylum-seeker drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin on Dec 19, killing 12 people.