LONDON – Anis Amri, the Tunisian man suspected of killing 12 people at a Berlin Christmas market on Monday evening, has been shot dead in Italy.
Milan’s police chief said Amri passed through France and arrived in Italy early Friday by train, according to the Associated Press.
Italy’s interior minister Marco Minnititold reporters that a routine Italian patrol stopped a car at 2 a.m. GMT on Friday and the man in the vehicle – identified as Amri by his fingerprints, which matched those found on the truck – opened fire after pulling a pistol from his rucksack. He was then shot and killed by police.
A police officer was injured in the exchange but is not in a critical condition.
Amri used to live in Italy and will have had knowledge of the country. He left Tunisia after the 2011 revolution and lived in Italy, according to AFP. Italian media said he served time in prison there for setting fire to a school.
ISIS on Tuesday afternoon claimedcredit for Monday's destruction, supporting what German and US officials had presumed to be an act of terrorism. The group's Amaq news agency called the truck driver an ISIS soldier who "executed the operation in response to calls to target nationals of the coalition countries."
On Friday, Amaq released a video of the Berlin suspect pledging allegiance to the terror group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
1) Breaking: #ISIS' Amaq releases video of #Berlin attacker pledging to #ISIS prior to attack pic.twitter.com/B2TOb182MQ
— Rita Katz (@Rita_Katz) December 23, 2016
The truck hijacked by Amri ran into the Berlin Christmas market outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Churchat about 8 p.m. local timeon Monday. It ploughed through stalls and tables and travelled 50 to 80 metres (164 to 262 feet),according to the Berliner Morgenpost.
Separately on Friday, German authorities arrested two brothers on suspicion of planning an attack on a shopping centre in the western city of Oberhausen. The two men were aged 28 and 31 and originally from Kosovo, police said, with the country on edge after a jihadist drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin killing 12 people.