BERLIN SUSPECT SHOT DEAD
SHOOTOUT AT MILAN While being checked, he pulled out a gun and shot a cop
Italian police shot dead the man believed to be responsible for this week’s Berlin Christmas market truck attack, killing him after he pulled a gun on them during a routine check in the early hours of Friday.
The 24-year-old Tunisian Anis Amri travelled to Italy from France, triggering a spate of criticism from eurosceptics over Europe’s open-border Schengen pact. An Italian police chief said his men had no idea they might be dealing with Amri when they approached him at around 3 am outside a station in Sesto San Giovanni, a suburb of the northern city of Milan. Amri is suspected of driving a truck that smashed through a Berlin market on Monday killing 12 people, and security forces across Europe have been trying to track him down.
The truck mowed through a crowd of people and bulldozed wooden huts selling Christmas gifts and snacks beside a famous church in west Berlin.
Militant group Islamic State acknowledged Amri’s death and his suspected role in the German attack - for which it has claimed responsibility - through its Amaq news agency. It also released a video purportedly showing Amri pledging allegiance to IS and vowing to avenge killings of Muslisms. Milan police chief Antonio De Iesu said Amri had arrived in Milan’s main railway station from France and had then travelled to Sesto San Giovanni, where two young policemen approached him because he looked suspicious.
He failed to produce any identification so the police requested he empty his pockets and his small backpack. He pulled a loaded gun from his bag and shot at one of the men, lightly wounding him in the shoulder. Amri then hid behind a car but the other police officer shot and killed him on the spot.