German police unsure man held is Berlin Christmas market attacker

German authorities said they may have detained the wrong man after a truck ploughed into a crowded Christmas market in central Berlin on Monday evening, killing 12 people.

Thomas de Maizière, Germany’s interior minister, said he was in “no doubt” that the attack, which also injured 48 people, was an act of terror, but he said the suspect in custody had denied involvement.

After Mr de Maiziere had finished his press conference, Klaus Kandt, Berlin’s police chief, told reporters they had not been able to confirm that the suspect in custody was the perpetrator.

“It’s unclear at this point whether he was really the culprit,” said Mr Kandt. “We can’t confirm that this person was the driver.”

The man in custody was arrested by police 2km from the scene after being chased on foot by an witness to the attack who led authorities to the suspect, Die Welt reported.

The authorities said the man being held is a Pakistani national who had applied for asylum after entering Germany on December 31 last year. He arrived in Berlin in February.

Speaking less than two hours before the interior minister, Chancellor Angela Merkel said it would be especially hard to bear if it turned out that the attacker was an asylum seeker.

“That would be particularly sickening for the many, many Germans who every day help refugees, and the many people who really need our protection and are trying to integrate into our country,” she said.

She added that the whole country was “united in profound grief” and promised that those responsible would be “punished with the full force of the law”.

The attack was on a Christmas market near the Kurfürstendamm, the main shopping street in West Berlin, in the shadows of the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church, which was partially destroyed in the second world war and left in ruins as a monument. It is now one of Berlin’s most distinctive landmarks.

It is the worst terror incident in Germany since large numbers of refugees began entering the country in 2015, many of them from Syria and other Muslim countries.

German security officials have repeatedly warned that militant groups such as Isis may have smuggled their operatives into Germany under cover of the refugee influx.

Mr de Maiziere said the articulated lorry, which had Polish number plates, ploughed into the crowd at about 8pm on Monday evening, driving for 60-80m at high speed before coming to a stop. He said 18 of those hurt were seriously injured.

Mr de Mazière said the suspect was known to police for minor offences but was not on any terrorist watchlist. He said there had been no claim of responsibility. German media named the man in custody as “Naved B”, a 23-year-old Pakistani man.

Monday’s events echoed the bloody attack in Nice in July when Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a 19-tonne truck through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day on the beachfront, killing 86 people.

Mr de Maiziere said that among the dead in Berlin was a man in the passenger seat, who had been shot, but so far the authorities had not retrieved a firearm.

Earlier, Poland’s prime minister, Beata Szydlo, confirmed that the “first victim” of the truck attack was a Polish citizen, thought to be the original driver of the vehicle, as reported by German media.

Mr de Maiziere said all of Berlin’s Christmas markets would be closed down for the day, although other markets and big events across Germany would go ahead as scheduled. “Cancelling them would be the wrong thing to do,” he said.

Video footage of the aftermath of the attack showed debris widely scattered across the pavement and several of the injured, some of them lying in pools of blood, being helped by passers-by. A number of people were trapped under the truck and had to be rescued by emergency services.

In an interview with Polish television, a man identified as the owner of the haulage company that operated the truck, Ariel Zurawski, said he had been unable to reach the original driver, who was his cousin, since around 4pm local time on Monday. German media reported that the lorry had been stolen at a building site in Germany.

If the attacker is found to be an asylum seeker it will heap pressure on Ms Merkel, putting the refugee issue back at the top of the country’s political agenda just months before federal elections where she is seeking a fourth term.

She has already come under fire from politicians on the right, who claim her decision to throw open Germany’s borders to tens of thousands of refugees in the summer of 2015 compromised the country’s security.

“These are Merkel’s dead!” tweeted Markus Pretzell, a leading figure in the populist Alternative for Germany party which calls for strict controls on immigration.

Frauke Petry, the party’s leader, said Germany was no longer safe. “Radical Islamist terrorism has struck in the heart of Germany,” she said.

Even within Ms Merkel’s CDU/CSU bloc there were calls for a tougher approach on immigration. Horst Seehofer, the prime minister of Bavaria and leader of the CSU, the Bavarian sister party of Ms Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said the country now needed to change its immigration and security policies, in the light of the attack.

However, politicians on the left urged calm. Cem Özdemir, head of the Green party, told German television that it would be wrong to respond to Monday’s attack by “going crazy” and turning the country into a high-security facility.

On Monday night a spokesperson for the US National Security Council said the US condemned the incident “in the strongest terms”, saying it “appears to have been a terrorist attack”.

“Germany is one of our closest partners and strongest allies, and we stand together with Berlin in the fight against all those who target our way of life and threaten our societies,” the spokesperson said.

Donald Trump, the US president-elect, tweeted: “Today there were terror attacks in Turkey, Switzerland and Germany – and it is only getting worse. The civilised world must change thinking!”

Zürich attack

A man who shot three people at a Zurich mosque on Monday is dead, police said on Tuesday, confirming that a body found near the scene was that of the assailant.

Three men were seriously injured in Zürich, Switzerland, when shots were fired in the prayer room of an Islamic centre near the city’s main station.

The latest events are likely to raise fears of xenophobic and religious violence spreading in Europe, affecting smaller countries such as Switzerland as well as Germany and France.

Additional reporting by James Shotter in Berlin and Ralph Atkins in Zurich