“Police confirm that a truck ploughed into a Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin-Charlottenburg,” according to a local newspaper in Berlin Morgenpost. At least twelve people were killed and 48 were injured, some seriously.
German media citing local security sources, said the arrested suspect was from Afghanistan or Pakistan and entered Germany in February as a refugee.
Berlin police said on Twitter they were investigating leads that the truck had been stolen from a construction site in Poland.
People were enjoying mulled wine and sausages at the foot of the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church in the heart of former West Berlin, when the vehicle mounted the pavement and mowed down shoppers at a high speed, eyewitnesses told CNN.
They said the truck had approached from Budapester Strasse, to the north of the market, before veering into the stalls without slowing.
Germany’s interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said it looked like a terrorist attack, but tried to avoid the conclusion, adding that the circumstances of the crash were unclear: “I don’t want to use the word ‘attack’.” But Berlin police say their investigation is now working on the assumption that the truck was deliberately driven into the Christmas market.
Police said on Twitter that they had taken one suspect into custody and that another passenger from the truck had died. They confirmed that the man found dead inside the truck, identified as a Polish citizen, was not the person who drove it into the market.
The man who was found dead in the truck did not control the truck that drove to the Christmas market #Breitscheidplatz
— PolizeiBerlinEinsatz (@PolizeiBerlin_E) December 20, 2016
Mainstream news sources, including The Telegraph, tried to inject confusion into the religious and ethnic identity of the killer, by suggesting he could have been “Polish”.
The incident is similar to an attack in Nice in July this year where 86 people were killed by a truck driven by an ISIS operative which was also deliberate. On Monday night German police warned local residents to stay indoors.
US President-elect Donald Trump condemned what he called an attack, linking it to “Islamist terrorists”. German intelligence had picked up several indications of an imminent attack on a market in the days leading up to the attack, according to Die Welt newspaper.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended her unpopular open border policy in recent months, after her party suffered damaging losses in regional elections and with general elections looming next year.
On Monday, Swiss Blick magazine reported that three people were hurt during a shooting at an Islamic center in Zurich. The area around the shooting was closed off by the police after shots were heard in a Muslim center in the Militärstrasse / Eisgasse.
One of the perpetrators is on the run, according to Swiss authorities.
Both events happened only moments after the Russian ambassador to Turkey was shot dead during an exhibition by an assassin who screamed “Allahu Akbar”.
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