Several people have been injured after a car drove into a crowd at a carnival procession in Germany, police said.

The driver was arrested, but police have not disclosed a cause for the crash.

Police told the dpa news agency that no deaths have been reported in the crash in Volkmarsen, about 175 miles south-west of Berlin.

Police said they do not have a specific number of injuries yet and they refused to release any details on the driver.

Police told dpa it was not yet clear whether the driver had suffered some sort of a medical issue, if there was a mechanical problem with the car or whether the vehicle was intentionally driven into the crowd.

Local media reported at least a dozen injuries, including children, but police could not immediately confirm the information.

Video from the scene showed a silver Mercedes with local licence plates and its hazard lights blinking on a pavement, while emergency crews walked by. The crash occurred on the south side of the town, outside a supermarket.

The crash came amid the height of Germany’s celebration of carnival, with the biggest parades in Cologne, Duesseldorf and Mainz.

Germany Carnival Crash
Emergency vehicles at the scene of the accident in Volkmarsen, central Germany (Uwe Zucchi/dpa via AP)

Volkmarsen, which has a population of 7,000, is east of Duesseldorf, near Kassel.

Police in Western Hesse state tweeted that all other carnival parades in the state on Monday were ended after the crash as a precaution.

Police shut down the area to allow emergency crews to deal with the crash.

Police said they could not immediately provide further details and urged people not to spread “unconfirmed reports” about the crash.

The regional Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper reported that witnesses said the driver drove around a barrier blocking off traffic from the parade, but that it was not yet clear whether the car intentionally headed towards the crowd.