‘Tunisian lone perpetrator’:

A Tunisian man whose asylum application had been rejected appears to have been the sole perpetrator of the attack on a Berlin Christmas market even though he was in contact with a member of the Islamic State group outside Germany, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

German prosecutors said they have found no evidence so far that anyone else in the country besides suspect Anis Amri was involved in planning or carrying out the Dec 19 attack, in which 12 people were killed.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, which Amri carried out using a truck commandeered from a Polish driver who was among the victims.

Amri fled Berlin following the attack and was killed in a shootout with police in Italy on Dec 23 after they stopped him for a routine identity check.

After the attack, IS released a video showing Amri swearing allegiance to the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and vowing to fight non-Muslims.

Prosecutors said Amri filmed the video in Berlin on Oct 31 or Nov 1. By Nov 10, he was communicating with an IS member abroad and still was in contact with him when he carried out the attack, they added. They didn’t identify or locate that person.

Amri’s internet habits changed in midNovember, according to prosecutors who evaluated a cellphone he used. He stopped calling up pornographic sites, which until then had dominated his browsing, and from early December went almost exclusively to Islamic extremist sites.

Authorities had already said Amri traveled through the Netherlands, Belgium and France on his way to Italy.

He appears to have returned briefly to his Berlin apartment after the attack, but his trail went cold until the early morning of Dec 21, when a witness reported seeing him on a bus between Emmerich and Kleve near the Dutch border, according to Wednesday’s statement. Amri had previously spent time in that region.

It’s still unclear how Amri got from Berlin to Emmerich, prosecutors said. (AP)