Berlin Market Attack: Manhunt for Tunisian With Islamist Ties Underway

The official says two police officers were suspicious because it was 3 a.m. and the station was closed.

Marco Minniti told a press conference that the 24-year-old Tunisian, wanted on suspicion of having killed 12 people in Monday’s truck attack, was stopped during a routine patrol shortly after 3 a.m.in Sesto San Giovanni, a suburb of northern Milan. There was no immediate comment from federal prosecutors, who are leading the investigation.

Authorities said they were looking into 500 possible leads and warned that the driver of the truck could be armed and unsafe, and may not have acted on his own.

Three separate terrorist attacks in July carried out by asylum seekers in Germany have heightened tensions in the country, following Merkel’s open-door policy on migration which saw just under a million refugees arriving a year ago alone. “We started to see the top of an articulated truck, a lorry. just crashing through the stalls, through people”.

German police are offering a 100,000 euro reward ($104,000) for information on Amri’s whereabouts.

An arrest warrant released by authorities listed six other aliases of varying nationalities that Amri has allegedly used.

Faced with online vilification and pressure from political foes attempting to link the attack to her open-border refugee policy, Merkel said terrorism is a long-range threat.

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But he was only placed under sporadic surveillance and, following the rejection of his asylum application and a looming deportation, he vanished.

In Washington D.C., State Department spokesman John Kirby said the attack “bears the hallmarks of previous terror attacks”, but US officials didn’t have enough information to back up Islamic State’s claim of responsibility.

After being turned down for asylum, the man should have been deported but could not be returned to Tunisia because his documents were missing, he said.

German Federal Prosecutor Peter Frank later on Friday confirmed that the person shot dead by Italian police was Amri. Islamic State subsequently claimed responsibility for the attack.

Tunisian suspect, Anis Amri, 24, remains at large, according to German police. Berlin police chief Klaus Kandt said on Tuesday a unsafe criminal maybe out in the area. “It was really clear that he was fighting for his life”, he said.