A CAR slammed into a crowd at a Carnival procession in a German town today, injuring several people, police said.

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

The driver has been arrested but police refused to release any further details.

It wasn’t 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, police said.

Local media reported at least a dozen injuries, including children, but police couldn’t immediately confirm the information.

Video from the scene showed a silver Mercedes station wagon with local number plates and its hazard lights blinking on a sidewalk, 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. Several cities in western Germany cancelled their traditional Carnival parades at short notice on Sunday because of inclement weather.

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

Police shut down the area to allow emergency crews deal with the crash. Police said they couldn’t 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 wasn’t yet clear whether he intentionally headed towards the crowd.