Truck attack targets Berlin Christmas market
• Mike Fox was just one of the many tourists wandering around Berlin’s Christmas market — where wooden stalls sell everything from sausages to candles to pottery — when a truck roared past him.
“It was definitely deliberate,” said Fox, visiting from Birmingham, England, of the truck that mounted the pavement at about 65 kilometres per hour and plowed into the busy market.
At least 12 people were killed and about 50 injured in what police suspect was a terrorist attack. The driver fled but was later arrested by police.
A passenger in the lorry — which came from Poland and may have been hijacked — was later found dead inside.
The attack echoed a similar incident in Nice in July this year where 86 people were killed by a truck driven by a terrorist inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The carnage came just hours after the Russian ambassador to Turkey had been shot dead in the Turkish capital Ankara by a policeman who claimed to be taking revenge for Moscow’s involvement in the battle for Aleppo.
And it followed warnings that ISIL terrorists may target Christmas markets in Europe.
Witnesses of the Berlin attack described scenes of panic and horror as the truck veered off the street and plowed into the crowded Christmas market just off the famous shopping street of Kurfurstendamm at around 8 p.m. local time.
“We were enjoying the Christmas lights and mulled wine. We were ready to get up when we heard a loud bang. To our left we saw Christmas lights torn down and the top of an articulated lorry crashing through the stalls and through people,” Emma Rushton, a tourist, told CNN.
“We wanted to get out as soon as possible.”
“We wanted to get to a safe place. From my opinion, it was going at 40 miles per hour, there was no sign it was slowing down. It did not feel like an accident,” Rushton said. “There was no way it could have come off like an accident, it was through the middle of the market. The stall where mulled wine was being served was crushed. I saw people bleeding, lying in the pavement.”
The market is in the shadow of the historic Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which is preserved in ruins from Second World War bombings.
Other witnesses described bystanders rushing to the aid of the injured in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Many of the injured were said to be in a lifethreatening condition.
The driver of the truck was believed to be being held by police. Witnesses described him as “eastern European” in appearance.
A second man, believed to be a passenger, was reportedly found dead in the truck.
The truck, which had Polish licence plates, belonged to a Polish delivery company. The company said the vehicle had left Poland for Berlin earlier in the day but they had lost contact with the driver.
The Polish owner of the truck said he feared the vehicle, driven by his cousin, may have been hijacked. Ariel Zurawki said he last spoke with the driver around noon, and the driver told him he was in Berlin and scheduled to unload Tuesday morning.
Zurawki said that “they must have done something to my driver,” he told TVN24.
There has long been concern in Germany that the country’s traditional Christmas markets could be a target for a terror attack. German intelligence picked up several indications of an imminent attack on a market in the days leading up to the attack, according to Welt newspaper.
The attack took place when the market would have been thronged with Christmas shoppers and people stopping off for a mug of Gluhwein or mulled wine on their way home.
The Breitscheidplatz market, where the attack took place, is particularly vulnerable as it is situated on a pedestrian island between two busy thoroughfares.
Witnesses said the truck had approached from Budapester Strasse, to the north of the market, before veering into the stalls without slowing.
“With the apparent attack on the Christmas market in Berlin, our worst fears have come true,” Stephan Mayer of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, said. “Now the security concepts at all the Christmas markets in Germany have to be examined — including the question of whether they can still take place at all.”
Since Nice, security experts have warned that it is largely impossible to protect people against this style of attack, in which a truck is driven into a crowd.
Attention will now focus on the identity of the perpetrators. Any indication that they may have been asylumseekers will heap pressure on Merkel over her controversial “open door” refugee policy, under which more than one million migrants entered Germany last year.
Merkel has distanced herself from the policy in recent months, and promised it will never be repeated, after her party suffered damaging losses in regional elections and with general elections looming next year.
On Nov. 21, the U.S. State Department issued an alert, warning Americans to “exercise caution at holiday festivals, events, and outdoor markets.” The alert said there was credible information that ISIL, al-Qaeda “and their affiliates continue to plan terrorist attacks in Europe, with a focus on the upcoming holiday season and associated events.”