ISLAMIC STATE CLAIMS ROLE IN BERLIN ATTACK
Authorities free original suspect
German authorities still looking for perpetrator after one suspect released for lack of evidence.
BERLIN — The Islamic State group claimed responsibility Tuesday for a truck attack on a crowded Berlin Christmas market that German authorities said came right out of the extremist group’s playbook, inflicting mass casualties on a soft target fraught with symbolic meaning.
The Monday night attack on the popular market by the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in the heart of former West Berlin left 12 dead and 48 injured — the first mass casualty attack by Islamic extremists carried out on German soil. German security forces were still hunting for the perpetrator after releasing a man from custody for lack of evidence.
The claim of responsibility carried on the Islamic State group’s Amaq news agency described the man seen fleeing from the truck as “a soldier of the Islamic State” who “carried out the attack in response to calls for targeting citizens of the Crusader coalition.”
Germany is not involved in anti-IS combat operations, but has Tornado jets and a refueling plane stationed in Turkey in support of the coalition fighting militants in Syria, as well as a frigate protecting a French aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean.
The claim of responsibility came not long after German prosecutors said they had released a man picked up near the scene of the attack, initially suspected of driving the truck.
The man, a Pakistani citizen who came to Germany last year, was taken into custody based on a description from witnesses of a suspect who jumped out of the truck and fled after the attack.
Even before his release, officials had expressed doubt the man was behind the attack.
In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said the attack “bears the hallmarks of previous terror attacks,” but said U.S. officials didn’t have enough information to back up the IS claim of responsibility.
Germany’s top prosecutor, Peter Frank, said there were still a lot of unanswered questions.
“We don’t know for sure whether it was one or several perpetrators,” he said. “We don’t know for sure whether he, or they, had support. These investigations aren’t concluded yet.”
Witnesses saw only one man flee from the truck after it hurtled through the market for 200 to 260 feet before coming to a stop near the 19th-century church.
Already under pressure for the huge influx of migrants, Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed head-on the possibility that an asylum-seeker was responsible for the carnage.
“I know that it would be particularly hard for us all to bear if it were confirmed that a person committed this act who asked for protection and asylum in Germany,” she said in a nationally televised statement.