BOMB SCARE AT BERLIN CHRISTMAS MARKET
Canister filled with nails, fireworks found a year after terror attack at similar site
POLICE were searching yesterday for the sender of a package initially feared to contain a bomb found near a Christmas market in Potsdam, almost a year after a deadly terror attack at a similar market in the capital here.
The device was uncovered on Friday at a pharmacy just off the Christmas market in Potsdam, a picturesque city near here.
“We are undergoing intense investigations in all directions,” a local police spokesman said.
A pharmacist sounded the alert after finding a canister with wires inside the package.
After initial reports that it was an explosive device, local authorities said the cylindrical canister was filled with nails and powder, batteries and wires — as well as a powerful firework of a type not allowed in Germany — but there was no sign of a detonator inside.
It is not yet clear if the Christmas market was the target, or only the pharmacy.
“Both options are possible,” Brandenburg Interior Minister Karl-Heinz Schroeter said.
The market was only partially evacuated on Friday and reopened as normal yesterday with a stronger police presence.
Germany has been on high alert for possible jihadist attacks after last December’s deadly assault at a Christmas market in central Berlin.
The attacker, Tunisian asylum seeker Anis Amri, hijacked a truck and murdered its Polish driver before killing another 11 people and wounding dozens more by ploughing the heavy vehicle through the market.
Four days later, while on the run, he was shot dead by Italian police in Milan. AFP