He also faces charges of attempted murder and grievous bodily harm related to the injury of 18 others, the public prosecutor in the south-western German city added.

The suspect, aged 51, was remanded in custody after appearing before a judge earlier on Wednesday.

Authorities had also considered keeping him in a closed psychiatric facility due to indications of a possible mental illness.

The man, a local resident, is suspected of driving his sport utility vehicle at high speed into members of the public “in an indiscriminate and targeted manner” on Tuesday, a statement from the prosecution said.

It was his intention “to kill or at least injure as many people as possible,” it added.

The driver was stopped by police four minutes into the rampage and detained.

Five people were killed in the attack: three women aged 25, 52 and 73, as well as a 45-year-old man and his nine-week-old daughter.

Eighteen people were injured, six of them seriously. That number was revised up from 14 late on Tuesday, as further casualty reports came in.

The mother of the baby survived the incident, but is also in hospital, together with her one-and-a-half-year-old son, according to authorities.

The motive for the crime remains unclear, according to prosecutors.

In questioning, the suspect is said to have given “changing and sometimes incomprehensible information.”

There were no indications “for any political, religious or similar motives,” the prosecutor’s office said. The accused had been under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crime.

Hundreds of people took part in a ceremony to commemorate the victims of the car-ramming attack.

Mourners lit candles and lay flowers at the Porta Nigra, Trier’s Roman-era city gate, not far from where the crime occurred.

“Trier is mourning, Trier is hurting, but Trier is not giving up,” Mayor Wolfram Leibe said.

He lay a wreath at the city landmark together with Malu Dreyer, premier of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, in which Trier lies.

“We mourn with the families of the dead and we pray for the injured,” Dreyer said.

“They will have to carry the consequences of those four deadly minutes with them for a whole lifetime,” she added.

Dreyer is a resident of Trier.

“Nothing, absolutely nothing, can justify this brutal and awful crime,” Dreyer said.

Leibe announced a moment of reflection for the victims, to take place on Thursday at 13:46 pm (1246 GMT), the time the rampage began. Church bells are to ring out at that time.