{UAH} What we know so far about the Berlin Christmas market attack

Berlin Christmas market attack

What we know so far about the Berlin Christmas market attack

A truck has ploughed into a crowd at Berlin's Christmas market, killing at least 12 people and injuring 48. Here is what we know about the attack so far

• Live: All the latest developments on Berlin Christmas market attack
  

How the Berlin Christmas market attack unfolded – video report

Claire Phipps

@claire_phipps

Tuesday 20 December 2016 12.42 GMT First published on Tuesday 20 December 2016 06.41 GMT

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• The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said "we have to assume we are dealing with a terrorist attack" after a truck was driven into a Christmas market in Berlin's Breitscheidplatz on Monday. "It would be particularly hard to bear for all of us if it was confirmed that a person committed this crime who asked for protection and asylum in Germany," she said.

• Twelve people were killed in the attack. A further 48 people have been taken to hospital with injuries, 18 of them seriously hurt. Police said a man found dead inside the truck, who was identified as a Polish citizen, was the registered driver and not the person who drove it into the market. Witnesses said the truck ploughed into the market at speed, crushing people.

Police investigate Berlin truck crash that killed 12 as 'presumed terrorist attack'

Read more

• A suspect arrested 2km from the scene shortly after the attack was identified as an asylum seeker from Pakistan. Later on Tuesday Berlin police said they were not certain that the man in custody was the truck driver.

• Early on Tuesday, police raided a hangar housing refugees at the disused Tempelhof airport in central Berlin, where the suspected driver of the lorry was registered. Police seized a laptop and a mobile phone during the raid but did not arrest anyone.

• Berlin police said they were investigating if the truck was stolen from a construction site in Poland. Other reports said it was returning to Poland from Italy. The Polish company that owns the truck said its 37-year-old driver, who was transporting steel beams, had been due to take a break in Berlin but had not been heard from since Monday afternoon.

• The White House condemned what it said "appears to have been a terrorist attack". The president-elect, Donald Trump, called it a "horrifying terror attack", blaming "Isis and other Islamist terrorists [who] continually slaughter Christians in their communities and places of worship".

• Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, said the attack was "savage in its cynicism".
  

• The rightwing populist party Alternative for Germany claimed the country's Christian tradition was under attack. Frauke Petry, its leader, said: "The Christmas market was not an accidental target. It is not only an attack on our freedom and our way of life, but on our Christian tradition. Germany is a country which is divided over the immigration question."

• Ukip's former leader Nigel Farage said "events like these will be the Merkel legacy".

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