Nine dead as truck ploughs into Berlin Christmas market

A second occupant of the truck’s cab is dead.

She also said she was certain the incident was not an accident, as the truck was far from main roads and showed no signs of slowing down.

The suspected driver has since been apprehended, a Berlin police spokesperson told CNN, as an investigation continues.

If confirmed, the revelations are likely to heap more pressure onto German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose decision to accept waves of migrants from Africa and the Middle East has stoked controversy and unsettled Germany and Europe.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny also spoke out against the “barbaric” attack and condemed the acts of violence in Zurich and Turkey.

He said he was sure his cousin was not an attacker. He told a television station that he suspected that the lorry had been stolen.

On Monday, December 19, at around 8 pm, a truck crashed into a busy Christmas market at Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz.

Sky’s Alistair Bunkall said that although comparisons with an attack that killed dozens of people in Nice in July were impossible to ignore, there was no proof that what has happened in Berlin is terror related. “[But] we couldn’t get a flight out Saturday, we flew out Sunday”.

Ms Rushton said: “The stall that we bought our mulled wine from was completely crushed”.

“People, including children and older people, weren’t moving – people were crying and I just burst into tears”.

“Some are dead”, she said after a driver drove up the pavement of the market at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on Monday evening.

Other witnesses described bystanders rushing to the aid of the injured.

The driver of the lorry was believed to be being held by police.

The truck had a Polish registration and was supposed to deliver goods from Italy to Berlin. Christmas markets in Germany draw thousands of tourists from around the world over the festive period.

Sources told the German newspaper “Die Welt” that the suspected terror suspect came into the country on February 16, according to the Telegraph.

Authorities have not characterized the incident as an attack.

She said the truck was going about 40 miles per hour in a crowded area with no roads.

Police shut down the Christmas market and sealed it off, then set up an area for the relatives of the injured.

Security had been increased at numerous nation’s Christmas markets this year, according to a recent dpa survey, amid fears they could be a target for terrorists.

But it was shaken by two smaller attacks in Bavaria over the summer, one on a train near Wuerzburg and another at a music festival in Ansbach that wounded 20 people.