TerrorismTruck attack on Berlin shoppers kills 9, injures 50

Published 19 December 2016

At least nine people were killed and more than fifty injured when a truck plowed into a crowd at the popular Christmas Market in Berlin two hours ago (Monday afternoon EST). The attack happened in Breitscheidplatz, a major square in the center of the German capital. The Mirror notes that every year, the city of Berlin hosts a Christmas market at the square. The market consists of “more than 100 beautifully decorated market stands and Christmas booths as well as 70 fairground rides,” according to the city’s Web site.

Berlin attack uses same method as the Nice attack // Source: theconversation.com

At least nine people were killed and more than fifty injured when a truck plowed into a crowd at the popular Christmas Market in Berlin two hours ago (Monday afternoon EST).

The attack happened in Breitscheidplatz, a major square in the center of the German capital. The Mirror notes that every year, the city of Berlin hosts a Christmas market at the square. The market consists of “more than 100 beautifully decorated market stands and Christmas booths as well as 70 fairground rides,” according to the city’s Web site.

The market is situated near the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm avenue. The truck plowed inti the crowd of shoppers at the foot of the landmark Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church. The church, heavily damaged by Allied bombing during the Second World War, has been kept as a ruin to serve as memorial for the war.

The German media said it was not immediately clear whether the incident was an accident, or a deliberate terrorist attack on the market.

Worried about terrorism have increased in Germany in the wake of the wave of Syrian immigrants admitted into the country in the last year-and-a-half. The latest incident was the arrest of a 12-year-old boy who allegedly attempted to set off a nail bomb at a Christmas market in the southern city of Ludwigshafen last week.

The German-born son of Iraqi immigrants appears to have been radicalized on the Web. Focus magazine reports that he had tried to set off the device at the Christmas market on 26 November, and again outside city hall on 5 December.

Stephan Meyer, the parliamentary spokesman on security issues for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc, said the boy apparently had turned rapidly to Islamic extremism.

“This shows how quickly the radicalization of a young person, a child, can take place,” he said.