Berlin Market Attack Suspect Shot Dead in a Shootout in Milan
German prosecutors have issued a Europe-wide wanted notice for 24-year-old Anis Amri, prime suspect of the attack.
- Anis Amra, prime suspect in Berlin’s deadly truck attack was shot dead in a shootout on Friday in Milan, Italy
- Europe-wide ‘wanted’ notices were issued for Anis Amra on Thursday
- The suspect was known as a potentially dangerous jihadist
- His father claimed that he left Tunisia seven years ago and has already served four years in a jail in Italy
- Police raids could not trace the man
- Security in and around US cities is tightened in the wake of the attack
- The attack killed 12 people
- ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack
The police shot dead Anis Amri, prime suspect in Berlin truck attack, on Friday. He was killed in a shoot-out in a suburb of the northern Italian city of Milan, a security source told Reuters. On Saturday, Amri’s nephew and two others linked to him were arrested in Tunisia.
German authorities were under fire on Thursday after it emerged that the prime suspect in Berlin's deadly truck attack, a rejected Tunisian asylum seeker, was known as a potentially dangerous jihadist.
German prosecutors have issued a Europe-wide wanted notice for 24-year-old Anis Amri from Oueslatia in rural central Tunisia, offering a 1,00,000-euro (USD 1,04,000) reward for information leading to his arrest. They have also issued a warning saying he "could be violent and armed".
Asylum office papers believed to belong to Amri, alleged to have links to radical Islamism, were found in the cab of the 40-tonne lorry that rammed through a crowded Christmas market in Berlin on Monday, killing 12 and injuring 48 others.
Suspect’s Brother Tells Him to Surrender
As the authorities across Europe scrambled on Thursday to track down the Tunisian suspect, one of his brothers urged him to surrender and stop being a fugitive.
One of Amri's brothers Abdelkader Amri, still in Tunisia, told The Associated Press:
He said Amri may have been radicalised in prison in Italy, where he went after leaving Tunisia in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.
Meanwhile, in a show of strength and defiance, the Christmas market reopened nearly three days after the attack, with concrete blocks in place at the roadside to provide extra security.
Visitors and organisers were sombre, but determined not to be cowed. Organisers at the market decided to ditch party music or bright lighting, and Berliners and visitors have laid candles and flowers at the site in tribute.
Amri left Tunisia seven years ago as an illegal immigrant and spent time in prison in Italy, his father and security sources told Tunisia's Radio Mosaique on Wednesday.
He served four years in jail in Italy on accusations of burning a school, Radio Mosaique said. The father told the radio station that his son left for Germany a year ago.
German police commandos raided two apartments in Berlin's neighbourhood of Kreuzberg on Wednesday but did not find the suspect, Die Welt newspaper reported, citing investigators.
It said investigators believed that Amri may have been in one of the two apartments. Police forces had to overpower a man at one of the apartments, the paper said. It gave no further information.
High Security in US Cities
In the wake of the attacks, police departments around the US are making a show of force at places where crowds gather at Christmas time.
In New York City, police dispatched heavily-armed counter terrorism officers to stand guard at crowded pop-up Christmas markets in Union Square, Bryant Park and Columbus Circle only an hour after news broke on Tuesday about the carnage in Berlin.
The police department also has a program to encourage truck rental companies to report any suspicious interactions with people wanting to rent vehicles that might be used in an attack.
Big cities have been fortifying sidewalks since the 11 September attacks, installing bollards and concrete planters designed to prevent vehicles from driving into pedestrians or the side of a building.
Parts of Times Square and a two-block stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House have been closed to traffic for years, partly as a precaution against car bombs.
ISIS Claims Responsibility
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the the attack on the Christmas market in Berlin, where an armed trucker drove into a crowd and killed 12 people.
The militant group’s AMAQ news agency said:
The German police said that they arrested the wrong person for the attack and that the real attacker is still armed and at large, according to Die Welt News.
The person arrested as the suspected driver is a 23-year old migrant from Pakistan, a German security source told Reuters on Tuesday.
He had arrived in Germany in February and was known to police for minor offences and used several names, said the source. He was staying at a refugee hostel in the building of what used to be Tempelhof airport, added the source.
It was found that one of those killed in the attack was in fact shot dead, German magazine Focus Online reported, citing the interior minister for the state of Brandenburg.
The victim was most likely the Polish driver, from whom the truck had, in all likelihood, been stolen. The Polish delivery company that owned the vehicle said it lost contact with the driver soon after it left Poland for Berlin.
Owner Ariel Zurawki said he was afraid the truck, driven by his cousin, might have been hijacked. “They must have done something to my driver,” Zurawki told the Polish news outlet TVN24.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was briefed by the interior minister and Berlin Mayor on the situation.
German media, citing police at the scene, said first indications pointed to an attack on the market, situated at the foot of the ruined Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church, which was kept as a bombed-out ruin after World War Two. But it is still not clear if the incident was an act of terror or an accident.
The incident evoked memories of an attack in France in July claimed by Islamic State when Tunisian-born man drove a 19-tonne truck along the beach front, mowing down people who had gathered to watch the fireworks on Bastille Day, killing 86 people.
The truck careered into the Berlin market at what would have been one of the most crowded times for the Christmas market, when adults and children would be gathering in the traditional cluster of wooden huts that sell food and Christmas goods.
Police cars and ambulances converged quickly on the scene as a huge security operation unfolded. The fate of the driver of the truck was not immediately clear, but Bild newspaper said he was on the run.
(With inputs from PTI, Reuters and AP)
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