Truck rams German Christmas market, killing 12 people

BERLIN -- A truck rammed into a crowded Christmas market in central Berlin on Monday evening, killing 12 people and injuring nearly 50 as it smashed through tables and wooden stands.

Police said a suspect believed to be the driver was arrested nearby and a passenger died as paramedics were treating him.

The popular Christmas market outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church was filled with tourists and locals when the large Scania truck hurtled into it. Germany's top security official said initial evidence pointed to an intentional act, and the White House condemned "what appears to have been a terrorist attack."

Police said early today 48 people were in hospitals, some of them with serious injuries.

Mike Fox, visiting from Birmingham, England, said the truck missed him by about three yards. Fox said he helped people who appeared to have broken limbs, and others were trapped under Christmas stands.

"You do what you can to help who you can, really. It happened so fast that there was nothing we could do to stop it -- if we'd tried to stop it, we would have been crushed," Fox said.

The truck, loaded with steel beams, came to a halt on a sidewalk on one side of the market.

After the attack, dozens of ambulances lined the streets waiting to evacuate people, and heavily armed police patrolled.

Authorities on Twitter urged people to stay away from the area, saying they need to keep the streets clear for rescue vehicles.

Among the dead was a passenger in the truck, who died as paramedics treated him, Berlin police spokesman Winfried Wenzel said. Police said later the man was a Polish national, but didn't give other details.

A suspect believed to be the driver was picked up about 1 1/2 miles away, near the Victory Column monument. He was being interrogated, Wenzel said. The truck was registered in Poland, and police said it was believed to be stolen from a building site there. They didn't give a specific location.

The Polish owner of the truck said he feared the vehicle, driven by his cousin, may have been hijacked. Ariel Zurawski said he last spoke with the driver about noon, and the driver told him he was in Berlin and scheduled to unload today.

"They must have done something to my driver," he told TVN24.

Federal prosecutors who handle terrorism cases took over the investigation, German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said.

In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said the United States was in contact with German officials and ready to help in the investigation and response.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump blamed Islamist terrorists, though it was unclear what that assessment was based on. He said Islamic extremists must be "eradicated from the face of the earth" and pledged to carry out that mission with all "freedom-loving partners."

But German officials said it was too early to call the crash intentional.

"I don't want to use the word 'attack' yet at the moment, although a lot speaks for it," Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told ARD television. "There is a psychological effect in the whole country of the choice of words here, and we want to be very, very cautious and operate close to the actual investigation results, not with speculation."

Even so, some politicians were pointing fingers. Marcus Pretzell, a prominent member of the anti-migration Alternative for Germany party, lashed out at the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, saying on Twitter: "When will the German state of law strike back? When will this cursed hypocrisy finally stop? These are Merkel's dead! #Nice #Berlin."

Germany has not experienced any mass-casualty attacks by Islamic extremists but has been increasingly wary since two attacks by asylum-seekers in the summer claimed by the Islamic State group. Five people were wounded in an ax rampage on a train near Wuerzburg and 15 in a bombing outside a bar in Ansbach, both in the southern state of Bavaria. Both attackers were killed.

Those attacks, and two others unrelated to Islamic extremism in the same weeklong period, helped stoke tensions in Germany over the arrival last year of 890,000 migrants.