German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere speaks during a press conference on Tuesday in Berlin following a terrorist attack the killing of 12 people when a speeding lorry cut a bloody swathe through a Berlin Christmas market.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the suspect, who denies involvement, entered Germany on Dec. 31 last year and arrived in Berlin in February.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel described herself as “shocked, shaken and deeply saddened” after what she said the government must assume was a “terrorist attack.” Mr. De Maiziere said that as far as officials know, the Islamic State group has not claimed responsibility.
In addition to those killed, nearly 50 people were injured when the truck ploughed into the popular Christmas market filled with tourists and locals outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church near Berlin’s Zoo station late Monday.
“There is still a lot that we don’t know about this act with sufficient certainty,” Ms. Merkel told reporters in Berlin, in her first personal statement following the incident. “But we must, as things stand, assume it was a terrorist attack.”
Ms. Merkel, who has been criticized for allowing in large numbers of migrants, addressed head-on the possibility that an asylum-seeker was responsible.
“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,” Ms. Merkel said. “This would be particularly sickening for the many, many Germans who work to help refugees every day and for the many people who really need our help and are making an effort to integrate in our country.”
Authorities arrested a man about 2 kilometres from the crash site on suspicion of having been at the wheel of the truck. Footage showed the suspect, his head covered in a white sheet, being pushed into a police car shortly after the attack. Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper reported that the man was known to police for minor crimes.
A spokesman for Berlin’s office for refugee affairs said police conducted a large-scale search overnight at a large shelter for asylum-seekers at the city’s now-defunct Tempelhof airport. Four men in their late 20s were questioned but nobody was arrested, Sascha Langenbach told The Associated Press.
Among the dead was a man in the truck, who succumbed as paramedics treated him, Berlin police spokesman Winfried Wenzel said. Police said later that the man was a Polish national, but didn’t give further details of who he was or what happened to him.
The Polish owner of the truck said he feared the vehicle may have been hijacked. Ariel Zurawski said he last spoke with the driver, his cousin, around noon, and the driver told him he was in Berlin and scheduled to unload Tuesday morning. “They must have done something to my driver,” he told TVN24.
Source:The Hindu
No comments:
Write comments