The German police and those of the main European countries have today launched a gigantic manhunt to capture the Berlin Christmas market killer, who on Monday evening caused at least 12 deaths and dozens of injuries, at the wheel of a lorry launched into the crowd , a stone's throw from the Church of Remembrance. Twelve people are hospitalized for "very serious injuries", say the authorities of the German capital. The Ministry of Health says that some of the injured are "in critical condition", without specifying the number. An attack claimed by ISIS. The German interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, announced that an arrest warrant has been issued for the entire Schengen area, against "a new suspect, not necessarily the culprit", but there are few doubts.
According to police sources, cited by the German and British press, it is a young Tunisian of 21 (24 according to some sources), Anis A., whose documents were found on the death truck. He got hold of it after a scuffle with the Polish driver of the vehicle, Lukasz Urban, 37, who died a hero trying to neutralize, but without success, the killer. Anis, according to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, had arrived in Italy in 2012 and then reached Germany in 2015. He was therefore "stopped by the police in August with a false Italian identity document in Friedrichshafen", a town on Lake Constance, on the border with Switzerland. At that moment he was registered in a center for asylum seekers in Emmerich on the Rhine, in the Kleve area, on the border with Holland, but his domicile had then been canceled by the authorities. The recently radicalized young man allegedly used "at least 12 false names" including "an Egyptian name", according to N24 TV.
The Tunisian, suspected of being the author of the attack on the Christmas market in Berlin, is to be considered "armed and dangerous". This is what is underlined in the warrant for the arrest of the man who used at least "six different names and three different nationalities". The man had been investigated by the authorities of North Rhine-Westphalia on suspicion of preparing a serious crime against the state: the Interior Minister of the Land Ralf Jaeger said at a conference in Duesseldorf.
Furthermore, the wanted Tunisian "had been locked up for two days in the Ravensburg prison" after "he was stopped in Friedrichshafen on July 30 for a check": Spiegel reports it online, underlining that "however, he was released two days later".
And Germany is offering up to €100.000 in bounty to anyone who provides information leading to the arrest of a suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack.
For the lost young Italian, Fabrizia Di Lorenzo, hopes are increasingly dim. “I feel that she has abandoned me,” her mother told the bishop of Sulmona, Angelo Spina. In addition to Fabrizia, there is only one Italian injured: a 34-year-old from Palermo, who returned home today with 25 stitches on his face. He will have to be operated on. Together with his German colleague Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano went to the site of the attack. “On behalf of the Italian government, I wanted to express our fraternal friendship and solidarity with Steinmeier and all of Germany: we suffer and are grieved together. Your suffering is that of free men". According to Alfano “at stake is freedom and our way of life. They want to create the fear that steals our freedom, we must fight to defend it: fighting against terror is fighting for freedom".
The reconstruction of the tragic minutes of the massacre gradually becomes clearer: the Polish driver found dead inside the lorry tried to stop the bomber right up to the last minute. And the terrorist is still on the run, perhaps already outside the German borders. The truck invaded a sidewalk near the Church of Remembrance.
