ROME, Italy — The Tunisian man suspected of carrying out the deadly Berlin truck attack at the Christmas market was shot dead by police in Milan on Friday, Italy’s Interior Minister Marco Minniti said.
The minister told a press conference in Rome that Anis Amri was fatally shot after firing at two police officers who had stopped his car for a routine identity check around 3 a.m. (0200 GMT).
Identity checks had established “without a shadow of doubt” that the dead man was Amri, the minister said.
He said that Amri had coolly pulled the weapon from a backpack and began shooting. One of the officers was hit in the shoulder during the exchanges, the minister said. The officer was in hospital, awaiting surgery but not in any danger.
A woman lights a candle underneath the Christmas Tree near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on December 20, 2016 one day after a truck crashed into a Christmas market. (AFP/Clemens Bilan)
Italy had Amri’s fingerprints on file as a result of him having been in prison in Sicily between 2011 and 2015.
German investigators were increasingly confident Thursday that Amri carried out the rampage after also finding his fingerprints in the cab of the truck that had been hijacked shortly before Monday’s attack, which left 12 people dead and dozens wounded.
This undated picture provided by Najoua Amri on Thursday, Dec. 22, 2016, shows Anis Amri, the fugitive Tunisian extremist suspected in Berlin’s deadly Christmas market attack, posing at his parents’ house in Oueslatia, central Tunisia. (Courtesy Najoua Amri to AP)
Thought to be around 24, he had been on the run since escaping after the attack. German authorities had offered a reward of 100,000 euros ($105,000) for information leading to his arrest.
He had arrived in Italy from his native Tunisia during the Arab Spring in 2011.
Shortly after his arrival he was sentenced to a prison term for starting a fire in a refugee center.
He was released in 2015 and made his way to Germany.
Media reports in Italy say he was on anti-terrorism police’s radar as a potential Islamist radical during his time in prison but was not considered a high-priority subject for monitoring.
Police patrol the reopened Christmas market near Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin on December 22, 2016, three days after it was attacked in a deadly truck rampage. (AFP/Clemens Bilan)
