Berlin market attack suspect killed in shootout in Italy
Italy confirms that a man killed in a shootout in Milan's Sesto San Giovanni neighborhood was the Berlin Christmas market terrorist; Anis Amri pulled a gun out of his bag and began firing when asked to produce his identity papers.
The suspect in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack was killed in a shoot-out in a suburb of the northern Italian city of Milan on Friday, Italy's interior minister said.
Marco Minniti told a news conference that "without any shadow of a doubt" the man was 24-year-old Tunisian Anis Amri, wanted for the attack in Berlin.
A police source said earlier Amri was identified by fingerprints.
Minniti said a routine police patrol stopped Amri in a Milan suburb in the early hours of Friday morning. The man took out a pistol and opened fire, injuring one of the police officers.
The officer is now recovering.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, in which the truck mowed through a crowd of people and bulldozed wooden huts selling Christmas gifts and snacks beside a famous church in west Berlin.
One of the 12 dead was the Polish driver from whom the truck had been hijacked. His body, stabbed and shot, was found in the cab.
Police across Europe have been searching for the assailant since the attack on Monday.
Amri was caught on camera by German police on a regular stake-out at a mosque in Berlin's Moabit district early on Tuesday, Germany's rbb public broadcaster reported.
Danish police had also said a man matching his description was seen in Aalborg in northern Denmark.
Authorities say Amri, 24, has used at least six different names and three nationalities in his travels around Europe.
He left Tunisia in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings and initially spent time in Italy.
He was repeatedly transferred among Sicilian prisons for bad conduct, with prison records saying he bullied inmates and tried to spark insurrections. He served 3-and-a-half years for setting a fire at a refugee center and making threats, among other things—but Italy apparently detected no signs that he was becoming radicalized.
The Berlin attack has put Europe on high alert over the Christmas period.
In the early hours of Friday morning, German special forces arrested two men suspected of planning an attack on a shopping mall in the city of OberhausenIn in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The men—two brothers from Kosovo, aged 28 and 31—were arrested in the city of Duisburg on information from security sources, police said.
A police spokesman said there was no connection between the Duisburg arrests and the Amri case.
Among those killed in Berlin was an Israeli woman Daliya Elyakim, who went missing for days after the attack. Her husband, Rami was also seriously injured in the attack, and was forced to undergo two operations.
