A European-wide search is on for a 24-year-old Tunisian man, suspected of being involved in Monday’s truck crash at a Christmas market in Berlin that killed 12 and injured nearly 50.

A German security official says authorities had considered him a possible terror threat before the incident and had been trying to deport him after his asylum application was rejected back in the summer.

The wanted poster names Anis Amri as having several aliases as well as Egyptian and Lebanese citizenship.

There’s a $140,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

The post REWARD OFFERED FOR ARREST OF SUSPECT IN BERLIN CHRISTMAS MARKET CRASH appeared first on Zoomer Radio AM740.</s>MILAN (Reuters) - Italian police shot dead the man believed responsible for this week’s Berlin Christmas market truck attack, killing him after he pulled a gun on them during a routine check in the early hours of Friday.

The suspect - 24-year-old Tunisian Anis Amri - traveled to Italy from Germany via France, taking advantage of Europe’s open-border Schengen pact to cross the continent undetected.

As anger grew over the fact that Amri had escaped expulsion twice in 18 months thanks to bureaucratic loopholes, euroskeptic parties called for the reintroduction of border controls, while Germany said deportations had to be made easier.

Amri is suspected of ploughing a truck through a festive Berlin market on Monday, killing 12 people. In a video released on Friday after his death, he is seen pledging his allegiance to militant group Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

“I call on my Muslim brothers everywhere... Those in Europe, kill the crusader pigs, each person to their own ability,” he says in the video posted on Islamic State’s Amaq news agency.

Amri had arrived in Milan’s main railway station from France at 1.00 a.m. (2000 EDT) and then traveled to the working class suburb of Sesto San Giovanni, where two young policemen approached him because he looked suspicious idling on a street.

Milan police chief Antonio De Iesu told a news conference his men had no idea that they might be dealing with Amri.

“They had no perception that it could be him, otherwise they would have been much more cautious,” De Iesu said. “We had no intelligence that he could be in Milan.”

He failed to produce any identification so the police requested he empty his pockets and his small backpack. He pulled a loaded gun from his bag and shot at one of the men, lightly wounding him in the shoulder.

Amri then hid behind a nearby car but the other police officer managed to shoot him once or twice, killing him on the spot, De Iesu said. Amri was identified by his fingerprints.

ITALIAN JAIL

De Iesu said that besides the gun, the suspect had been carrying a small pocket knife. He also had a few hundred euros on him but no cell phone and very few other belongings.

Amri once spent four years in jail in Italy and police were trying to work out if he knew someone in Sesto, which is home to a sizeable Muslim community. “He could have carried out other attacks. He was a loose cannon,” De Iesu said.

Islamic State had previously claimed responsibility for the Berlin killings and on Friday it acknowledged the death of the man it referred to as “the executor of the Berlin attacks.”

The body of Anis Amri, the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack, is seen covered with a thermal blanket next to Italian officers in a suburb of the northern Italian city of Milan, Italy December 23, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer

Leading euroskeptics were quick to blame the Schengen open borders pact for allowing the suspect to travel so easily.

“This escapade in at least two or three countries is symptomatic of the total security catastrophe that is the Schengen agreement,” said Marine Le Pen, who leads France’s far-right National Front party and is running for president.

Beppe Grillo, the founder of the 5-Star Movement, Italy’s main opposition party, said Schengen was allowing militants to cross Europe with impunity and had to be re-thought. He also said all illegal migrants had to be expelled from the country.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, under increasing pressure inside Germany to take a much tougher line on immigration after opening the country’s borders to waves of refugees in 2015, said the Berlin attack raised many questions and promised measures would be taken to improve security.

Amri originally come to Europe in 2011, reaching the Italian island of Lampedusa by boat. He told authorities he was a minor, though documents now indicate he was not, and he was transferred to Catania, Sicily, where he was enrolled in school.

Just months later he was arrested by police after he attempted to set fire to the school, a senior police source said. He was later convicted of vandalism, threats, and theft.

He spent almost four years in Italian prisons before being ordered out of the country after Tunisia refused to accept him back in 2015 because he had no identification papers linking him to the north African country.

He moved to Germany and applied for asylum there, but this was rejected after he was identified by security agencies as a potential threat. Once again he could not be deported because of a lack of I.D.

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Merkel said on Friday she had told Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi during a phone conversation that her government wanted to speed up deportation of failed asylum seekers.

The attack, which echoed one in Nice in July that killed more than 80 people, has put Europe on high alert over the Christmas period.

Early on Friday, German special forces arrested two men suspected of planning an attack on a shopping mall in the western city of Oberhausen.

The men - two brothers from Kosovo, aged 28 and 31 - were arrested in the city of Duisburg on information from security sources, police said. A police spokesman said there was no link with the Amri case.</s>BERLIN (AP) – The Latest on the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market (all times local):

5:45 p.m. – German authorities are offering a reward of up to 100,000 euros ($105,000) for the arrest of a Tunisian man suspected of involvement in the fatal attack on a Christmas market in Berlin.

Federal prosecutors describe 24-year-old Anis Amri as of average height and weight, with black hair and brown eyes.

In a public notice issued Wednesday, prosecutors warn that the suspect could be “dangerous and armed,” and urge members of the public to notify police if they see him.

5:05 p.m. – Berlin’s city government says 12 people are still being treated for very serious injuries after the truck attack on a Christmas market.

Twelve people were killed and 48 wounded in Monday night’s attack. Berlin’s state health ministry said Wednesday that 12 people are still in hospital with very serious injuries, among them an unspecified number in critical condition.

However, it said that an increasing number of people with lighter injuries are being discharged.

4:55 p.m. – A wanted notice for a Tunisian suspect in the truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin says the man should be considered armed and dangerous.

The notice, a European arrest warrant from Germany obtained by The Associated Press, indicates he has at times used six different aliases and three different nationalities.

It names Anis Amri as having Tunisian citizenship, born in the town of Ghaza. But it lists multiple aliases, many of them variants on his name, and Egyptian and Lebanese citizenship as well.

German authorities say they rejected the man’s asylum request in July.

AP ALERT: Wanted notice for suspect in Berlin truck attack says he has used 6 different names, 3 nationalities

PARIS (AP) – Wanted notice for suspect in Berlin truck attack says he has used 6 different names, 3 nationalities.

4 p.m. – A senior German security official says the Tunisian man being sought in connection with Monday’s truck attack in Berlin had been considered a possible terror threat by German authorities.

The interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, Ralf Jaeger, says “security agencies exchanged information about this person in the joint counter-terrorism center, the last time in November.”

Jaeger told reporters on Wednesday that state police had launched proceedings against the man on suspicion that he was preparing a serious crime.

Separately, he says German authorities rejected the man’s asylum request in July.

2:50 p.m. – Stephan Mayer, a lawmaker with Germany’s governing conservatives who speaks on domestic security matters, says the new suspect in the Berlin market attack being sought by German authorities is thought to be a Tunisian with ties to Islamic extremists.

Mayer says the man, whose wallet was found in the cab of the truck that slammed into a busy Christmas market in the German capital on Monday evening, was apparently meant to be deported from Germany earlier this year.

Mayer spoke Wednesday after being briefed by security officials about the investigation into the truck attack that left 12 people dead and nearly 50 injured.

2:40 p.m. – Germany’s interior minister has confirmed that authorities are seeking a new suspect in the deadly truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere says Wednesday that a manhunt has begun in Germany and in the European Union’s border-free Schengen area. He gave no details on the suspect.

He also would neither confirm nor deny details published in German media, which reported that he’s a Tunisian whose documents were found in the truck that killed 12 people and injured nearly 50 as it plowed into a Christmas market on Monday evening.

2:30 p.m. – A Tunisian official says German investigators are trying to determine the role of a Tunisian man whose identity papers were found in the cab of the truck that smashed into Berlin’s Christmas market.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the German government hasn’t publicly commented on the potential suspect, said Tunisian authorities are requesting more information on the German probe into Anis Amri. He declined to comment further.

A Tunisian living in France was shot to death after carrying out a similar attack on Bastille Day revelers in the southern French city of Nice, killing 86 people.

2:00 p.m. – The German government has agreed on a bill that will strengthen security considerations when it comes to video surveillance.

The move has been planned for months but its approval by the Cabinet on Wednesday comes two days after a deadly truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin that sent German authorities scrambling for footage of the suspected perpetrator.

The proposed law would make data protection commissioners give greater weight than before to “the protection of life, health and freedom” when deciding whether to permit video surveillance in public places.

Germany has traditionally had very restrictive data protection rules.

The bill needs to be approved by Parliament.

1:00 p.m. – The top security official in Germany’s western state of North Rhine-Westphalia is planning to make a statement related to the truck attack in Berlin.

Officials say the state’s interior minister, Ralf Jaeger, will make a statement at 3:30 p.m. (1430 GMT) Wednesday.

German media report that police are searching for a Tunisian man whose documents were found in the cab of the truck that plowed into a Berlin Christmas market Monday, killing twelve and injuring dozens.

The man’s documents were issued in Kleve, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia state on the border with the Netherlands.

12:15 p.m. – French President Francois Hollande says French intelligence services are in “constant contact” with German counterparts about extremist threats, notably since the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market.

Hollande signed a book of condolences at the German Embassy in Paris on Wednesday for the 12 killed in Monday’s attack. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group and echoed a similar attack in the French city of Nice in July.

Hollande promised solidarity and support for Germany, just as German authorities offered help when France has been attacked in recent years.

Hollande did not provide details of French police efforts to find the driver who rammed a truck into the Berlin market and is believed still at large.

12 p.m. – German media report that authorities have identified and are searching for a suspect in connection with the fatal truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market.

The Allgemeine Zeitung in Mainz, weekly Der Spiegel and daily Welt reported Wednesday that police found documents in the truck cab that were issued to a Tunisian man. They did not cite any sources for the information.

German authorities had to release two suspects arrested in the wake of Monday’s attack due to insufficient evidence. They had no immediate comment on Wednesday’s reports.

Twelve people were killed and nearly 50 were injured in the attack on the Christmas market in Berlin.

11:40 a.m. – Germany’s president has visited patients at a Berlin hospital who were wounded in Monday’s truck attack. The hospital’s medical director says that they are suffering from pelvic and other injuries.

President Joachim Gauck said he spoke with three patients at the Charite hospital who faced operations on Wednesday and he was impressed by their “composure.” He also met a man who had rushed to help in the aftermath of the rampage and was hit by a steel beam.

The Charite took in 13 patients after the attack, two of whom died. Medical director Ulrich Frei says that, among those who are still being treated, four have “severe trauma of the lower extremities and the pelvis.”

10:40 a.m. – The Israeli Foreign Ministry says that an Israeli man was seriously wounded in the truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin and his wife is missing.

Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said Wednesday that the man is in stable condition following surgery. He says Israel is in touch “day and night” with German authorities to try to find the wife.

He declined to disclose the couple’s personal details, saying only that the couple was in Berlin on holiday and that their relatives had arrived in Germany on Tuesday.

8:30 a.m. – German investigators were searching Wednesday for the killer or killers in Monday’s attack on a crowded Berlin Christmas market after a man arrested soon after the rampage was released for lack of evidence and the Islamic State group claimed responsibility.

Police in Berlin said they had received 508 tips on the attack as of Tuesday night, but it wasn’t clear whether prosecutors had any concrete leads.</s>Berlin: The Tunisian man, believed to be the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack was killed in a shoot-out Italy's Milan on Friday, reports said.

According to the reports, the suspect, Anis Amri, was stopped in his car around 3 am for what was a routine identity check. He pulled out a pistol and shootout ensued in which he was shot.

Police in Germany were searching for a Tunisian man in relation to the Berlin Christmas market attack.

A residence permit was found in the truck that on Monday ploughed through a crowd, killing 12 and injuring 48. The man was identified by the magazine as Anis A., a 24-year-old Tunisian who could be using two different aliases.

Prosecutors had issued a Europe-wide wanted notice for 24-year-old Anis Amri, offering a 100,000-euro ($104,000) reward for information leading to his arrest and warning he "could be violent and armed".

Christmas markets have been a known potential target for Islamist militants since at least 2000, when authorities thwarted a plot to attack one in Strasbourg, France. And the modus operandi in Berlin was identical to that of a Bastille Day attack in the French city of Nice in July, when a Tunisian-born man rammed a lorry through a seaside crowd and killed 86 people.</s>MILAN – The Tunisian man suspected of attacking a Christmas market in Berlin was killed early Friday in a shootout with police in Milan during a routine patrol, ending a Europe-wide manhunt.

“The person killed, without a shadow of a doubt, is Anis Amri, the suspect of the Berlin terrorist attack,” Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti said. Amri, who was the subject of a Europe-wide manhunt, was identified with the help of fingerprints supplied by Germany.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s attack outside Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in which a truck plowed into a crowd of shoppers, killing 12 people and injuring 56 others.

Amri, 24, who had spent time in prison in Italy, was stopped by two officers during the routine police check in the Sesto San Giovanni neighborhood of Milan early Friday. He pulled a gun from his backpack after being asked to show his identification and was killed in an ensuing shootout.

One of the officers, Christian Movio, 35, was shot in the right shoulder and underwent surgery for a superficial wound and was in good condition. Movio’s 29-year-old partner, Luca Scata, fatally shot Amri in the chest.

Amri’s death doesn’t reduce the terrorist threat to Germany, the country’s top security official said.

The threat “remains high” and security won’t be scaled down, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said.

He praised the two Milan police officers “who did excellent work and acted with great bravery.”

“I’m very relieved that this attacker poses no risk anymore,” he said.

Amri passed through France before arriving by train at Milan’s central station around 1 a.m. Friday, Milan police chief Antonio de Iesu said. He declined to provide further information, citing the ongoing investigation.

Germany’s chief federal prosecutor, Peter Frank, said his office is in contact with Italian authorities to establish what route Amri took.

A Milan anti-terrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly about the investigation, said Amri made his way to the piazza outside the Sesto San Giovanni train station in a suburb of Milan, which isbnearly 5 miles from the main train station.

Two police officers became suspicious because it was 3 a.m. and the station was closed and Amri was alone. Authorities are still trying to determine how Amri arrived at the piazza because only a few buses operate at that hour.

“It is now of great significance for us to establish whether the suspect had a network of supporters or helpers in preparing and carrying out the crime, and in fleeing; whether there were accessories or helpers,” Frank said.

Prosecutors also want to know whether the gun Amri was carrying in Milan was the same one used to shoot the Polish driver of the truck he had commandeered for the attack, Frank added. The driver was found dead in the vehicle’s cab.

The Milan anti-terrorism official said investigators also are working to determine what contacts, if any, Amri had in Milan. There is no evidence he ever passed through Milan during his previous stay in Italy, where he spent time after leaving Tunisia in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.

Amri served 31/2 years for setting a fire at a refugee center and making threats, among other things – but Italy apparently detected no signs that he was becoming radicalized. He was repeatedly transferred among Sicilian prisons for bad conduct, with prison records saying he bullied inmates and tried to spark insurrections.

His mother said he went from there to Switzerland and then to Germany last year.

Authorities in Germany deemed him a potential threat long before the Berlin market attack, and even kept him under covert surveillance for six months this year.

They had been trying to deport him after his asylum application was rejected in July but were unable to do so because he lacked valid identity papers and Tunisia initially denied that he was a citizen.

Authorities say Amri has used at least six different names and three nationalities in his travels around Europe.

A spokeswoman for Chancellor Angela Merkel, Ulrike Demmer, said the German leader would speak with her Tunisian counterpart later Friday to discuss issues including the deportation of Tunisian citizens.

Winfield reported from Rome. Frank Jordans and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.</s>A man believed to be the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack was killed in a shoot-out in a suburb of the northern Italian city of Milan on Friday, a security source told foreign media.

The Italian interior minister will hold a news conference at 10:45 a.m. (0945 GMT), the ministry said.

Earlier today, a man matching the description of Amri was seen in Aalborg in northern Denmark, the Danish police tweeted. The police said people should keep away from the area as it had an ongoing operation there.

Fingerprints from a Tunisian suspect were also found inside the truck that smashed through the Christmas market and investigators assumed the migrant was at the wheel, officials said. Police had been on the hunt across Europe for Anis Amri, 24, as Germany reels from its worst attack in decades.</s>Italian police cordon off an area around a body after a shootout between police and a man in Milan's Sesto San Giovanni neighborhood. Italy's interior minister said the man killed in an early hours shootout is "without a shadow of doubt" the Berlin Christmas market attacker Anis Amri.

Italian police cordon off an area around a body after a shootout between police and a man in Milan's Sesto San Giovanni neighborhood. Italy's interior minister said the man killed in an early hours shootout is "without a shadow of doubt" the Berlin Christmas market attacker Anis Amri.

Italy's interior minister said that the Tunisian man suspected of driving a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin was killed early Friday in a shootout with police in Milan, The Associated Press reported.

Checks conducted after the shootout showed "the person killed, without a shadow of a doubt," is Anis Amri, Interior Minister Marco Minniti said during a news conference.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Monday attack in Berlin, which killed 12 and injured 56 others.

Amri, 24, who had spent time in prison in Italy, was stopped by two officers during a routine police check in the Sesto San Giovanni neighborhood of Milan early Friday, the AP reported. He pulled a gun from his backpack after being asked to show his identity papers and was killed in the ensuing shootout.

One of the two officers was shot by Amri and is in the hospital, but his condition is not life-threatening, Minniti said. The other officer fatally shot Amri, the AP reported.

Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni said he telephoned German Chancellor Angela Merkel to tell her that the suspect had been killed.

Amri had been at large since the attack, and European authorities had offered a reward of up to 100,000 euros (about $104,000) for information on his whereabouts, CNN reported.

Amri arrived in Milan by train from the French region of Savoy, according to Italian news agency ANSA. He went from Chambery to Turin and then took a train to Milan, where he arrived at around 1:00. Then he went from Milan's Stazione Centrale to Sesto San Giovanni, ANSA reported.

Amri was killed by a trainee police officer, 29-year-old Luca Scatà, ANSA reported, citing unnamed sources said. The other policeman, Christian Movio, 36, is in hospital in Monza after being injured, ANSA reported, again citing unnamed sources.



#Minniti: man killed in shoot-out with police in Milan is Berlin attacker Anis Amri #berlinattack — Polizia di Stato (@poliziadistato) December 23, 2016

"We can be relieved at the end of this week that one acute danger has been ended," Merkel said. "But the danger of terrorism as a whole remains, as it has for many years — we all know that."

The Associated Press reported that officials are owkring to determine hoe Amri got to the market since few busses were operating at the time of the attack.

Peter Frank, Germany's chief federal prosecutor leading the investigation said, "It is now of great significance for us to establish whether the suspect had a network of supporters or helpers in preparing and carrying out the crime, and in fleeing, whether there were accessories or helpers."</s>MILAN (AP) -- Italian news agency ANSA says a man killed in a shootout with police in Milan is the main suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack.

The Interior Ministry has called a press conference for Friday morning.

The shootout took place at 3 a.m. in Milan's Sesto San Giovanni neighborhood during a routine police check.

ANSA says the main pulled out a gun from his backpack after being asked to show his identity papers. The man was killed in the ensuing shootout.

ANSA said various sources in Milan and Rome confirmed that the dead man was Anis Amri, the suspect in the Berlin truck attack on Monday that killed 12 people.</s>ROME (AP) – The Tunisian man suspected of driving a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin has been killed in a shootout with police in Milan.

Italy’s Interior Ministry says checks conducted after the shootout show “the person killed, without a shadow of a doubt, is Anis Amri.”

Milan police say Amri passed through France and arrived in Italy early this morning by train. The Berlin attack killed 12 people and injured 56.

German authorities say they’re still waiting for official confirmation that the person killed by police in Milan, Italy, overnight was Amri.

Germany’s Interior Ministry says, “should this turn out to be true, then the Interior Ministry is relieved that this person doesn’t pose a threat anymore.</s>The Berlin Christmas market attack suspect has been killed in Milan, according to Italian state police. Twelve people were killed and dozens injured when a truck plowed into the busy market Monday.
The 24-year-old Tunisian who is suspected of driving the truck that smashed through a Berlin market is killed in a shoot-out in Milan.