The Berlin police said early Tuesday that the killing of at least 12 people and the wounding of dozens more when a truck plowed through a Christmas market on Monday night was “a suspected terrorist attack.”
In a statement, the police added that they were working swiftly and with “necessary care” in the investigation.
The truck jumped the sidewalk about 8 p.m. near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, whose jagged spire, a reminder of the bombings during World War II, is one of the most symbolic sites in Berlin.
The police said they later arrested a man near the scene who was suspected of driving the truck, which had been stolen from a worksite in Poland about a two-hour drive from Berlin. A passenger, identified by the authorities as a Polish national, was found dead in the cab.
There was no claim of responsibility, but the episode immediately evoked the attack in July in Nice, France, when a truck driver ran over and killed more than 80 people during Bastille Day celebrations.
The impact scattered people who just moments before had been shopping and drinking mulled wine amid stands that sell Christmas gifts, sweets and sausages. At least 45 people were injured, including several with severe wounds, the authorities said.
“People were sitting holding their heads, there were pools of blood on the floor,” said Emma Rushton, a British tourist, who was visiting Berlin for the first time and who watched as the truck crushed a stand right in front of her.
Though it was never clear if the driver in Nice was linked to the Islamic State, the group’s exhortations to run over its enemies seemed to have inspired the killer, who had a long history of disturbed and violent behavior.
If the Berlin attack turns out to have been carried out by someone who entered Germany as a migrant, it could produce yet another political crisis for Chancellor Angela Merkel. Ms. Merkel has been sharply criticized for allowing one million migrants to enter the country, often without any screening or background checks.
Heiko Maas, Germany’s justice minister, said that federal prosecutors had taken over the investigation of the episode, an indication that the authorities suspected terrorism.
Andreas Geisel, Berlin’s top security official, initially insisted it could have been either an attack or an accident. And Thomas de Maizière, Germany’s interior minister, refused to use the word “attack” in an interview with the public broadcaster ARD.
“The words we choose have a psychological effect on the whole country,” Mr. de Maizière said. “I am consciously avoiding using the word ‘attack,’ although there is a lot that points in that direction.”
Officials in Washington were less cautious in their characterization, based on similar attacks that the Islamic State seems to have inspired before, like the one in Nice.
“The United States condemns in the strongest terms what appears to have been a terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin,” the National Security Council said in a statement.
Since Ms. Merkel’s decision last summer to throw open Germany’s borders to migrants and refugees, her country has grown jittery and concerned by security threats and the challenges of integrating the newcomers.
An attack on a Christmas market would be likely to provoke particular ire. Christmas markets are a beloved German tradition that open on the first Sunday of Advent and attract thousands of visitors throughout December until Christmas Eve.
Coming only days before Christmas, the crash left Germans numb and unnerved after months marked by a steady uptick of episodes, increasing in lethality.
Berlin Police on Truck Crash
A police spokesman said a suspect had been arrested nearby shortly after a truck crashed into a Berlin Christmas market.
The year opened with scores of sexual assaults in Cologne for which migrants were blamed and reports of a threatened attack on Munich’s main railway station.
Since February, four smaller-scale terrorist attacks have been carried out in Germany by people who said they were motivated by the Islamic State, two of them refugees.
One refugee injured five passengers on a train near Würzburg, and the other wounded 15 people when he detonated a bomb in his backpack near a concert in Ansbach.
The attacks have helped to feed a growing populist movement and have helped the far-right, nationalist Alternative for Germany party gain strength, with representation in half of the country’s 16 states.
Ms. Merkel said on Monday she was in contact with Mr. de Maizière, the interior minister, and the mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller.
“We mourn the dead and hope the many injured can be helped,” the chancellor’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said on Twitter.
The police in Berlin said that a man had been found dead in the passenger seat of the cab of the truck, which had Polish license plates.
Ariel Zurawski, whose company owns the truck, said in a telephone interview that his cousin had been driving it and was a reliable individual who would not be capable of a deliberate act of terrorism.
“I vouch for him. He’s my cousin and I’ve known him for ages. I trust him completely,” Mr. Zurawski said. “He’s very dedicated to his job. He’s a very experienced driver and always takes great care of the equipment.”
Mr. Zurawski said he had spoken to his cousin around noon and everything was fine, but he added that his cousin’s wife had been unable to get a hold of him when she called him about four hours later.
“That was already a bad sign,” he said.
Firefighters at the site could be seen surrounding the trailer of the truck, parked on the square at the base of the tower of the church. Emergency vehicles surrounded the square, which sits between two main streets that run through the heart of West Berlin.
“It’s terrible to see this scene,” Mr. Müller said. “It’s exactly what we did not want to see in Berlin.”
Courtesy: THE NEW YORK TIMES
