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Anis Amri, the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack was
killed in a shoot-out with police in a suburb of the Italian city of
Milan on Friday.
Anis, 24, killed 12 people and wounded dozens more in Monday's assault
on a Christmas market, which has been claimed by the Islamic State
jihadist group.
Italy's interior minister Marco Minniti told a press conference in Rome
that Amri had been fatally shot after firing at police who had stopped
his car for a routine identity check around 3:00 am (0200 GMT).
Identity checks had established "without a shadow of doubt" that the dead man was Amri, the minister said.
Amri had been missing since escaping after
Monday's attack in central Berlin. He had links to Italy, having arrived
in the country from his native Tunisia in 2011.
Shortly after his arrival in Italy he was
sentenced to a four-year prison term for starting a fire in a refugee
centre. He was released in 2015 and made his way to Germany.
German police said Amri steered the 40-tonne
truck in the attack after finding his identity papers and fingerprints
inside the cab, next to the body of its registered Polish driver who was
killed with a gunshot to the head.
A Europe-wide wanted notice had offered a 100,000-euro ($104,000) reward for information leading to Amri's arrest.
In Tunisia, a brother of the fugitive had
appealed to him to surrender and said: "If my brother is behind the
attack, I say to him 'You dishonour us'."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday
she was "proud of how calmly most people reacted" to the country's
deadliest attack in years.
Berlin public broadcaster RBB reported that
police filmed Amri heading into a Berlin mosque on Tuesday - after the
attack - at a time when the investigation was still focused on a
Pakistani suspect who was later released.
Officials earlier revealed that Amri was a
rejected asylum seeker with a history of crime, had spent years in an
Italian jail and had long been known to German counter-terrorism
agencies.
News weekly Der Spiegel reported that in
wiretaps, Amri could be heard offering to carry out a suicide operation,
but that his words were too vague for an arrest warrant.
Amri had been monitored since March, suspected
of planning break-ins to raise cash for automatic weapons to carry out
an attack - but the surveillance was stopped in September because Amri
was mostly active as a small-time drug dealer.
On Thursday, Berliners flocked to the reopened Breitscheid square Christmas market that was targeted in Monday's
carnage. The government has appealed for people to carry on as normal
and not to give in to fear. Organisers dimmed festive lights and turned
down the Christmas jingles as a mark of respect for those killed.
Victims were also honoured with candles, flowers, letters of
condolence and signs reading "Love Not Hate". Among the dead were six
Germans, 60-year-old
Israeli Dalia Elyakim, and a young Italian woman called Fabrizia Di
Lorenzo. Forty-eight others were injured.
On Friday, a memorial concert was planned at the iconic Brandenburg gate under the theme of "Together Berlin".
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