Germany was hunting for possible accomplices of the suspected Berlin truck attacker Saturday, a day after he was killed in a shoot-out with Italian police in Milan.
As most of the country readied to celebrate Christmas Eve, Germany’s under-pressure authorities said hundreds of investigators would be working on the probe throughout the holiday season.
Tunisian Anis Amri, 24, is believed to have hijacked a truck and used it to mow down holiday revelers at a Berlin Christmas market on Monday, killing 12 people in an attack claimed by the ISIL Takfiri group.
The rejected asylum seeker then went on the run and was the focus of a frantic four-day manhunt.
The fact that he was able to travel to Italy with ease despite being subject to a European arrest warrant has raised uncomfortable questions for intelligence agencies.
Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday expressed relief that the fugitive no longer posed a threat, but warned that “the danger of terrorism in general endures”.
She pledged a “comprehensive” analysis of how the known Takfiri was able to slip through the net in the first place.
“The Amri case raises questions,” she said. “We will now intensively examine to what extent official procedures need to be changed.”
Amri was shot dead after pulling out a pistol and firing at two officers who had stopped him for a routine identity check Friday near Milan’s Sesto San Giovanni railway station.
He lightly wounded one of the officers before being killed by 29-year-old police rookie Luca Scata.
Source: AFP
