Roj Bash Kurdistan

Berlin Breitscheidplatz: Lorry kills nine at Christmas market

A lorry has ploughed into a busy Christmas market in the heart of Berlin, killing nine people and injuring many more, police say.

Police say they suspect it was a deliberate attack. Video shows stalls knocked over and people lying injured.

A suspect has been arrested while the suspected co-driver was found dead, police say.

The market is at Breitscheidplatz, close to the Kurfuerstendamm, the main shopping street in the city's west.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, tweeted to say: "We are in mourning for the dead and hope that the many injured can get help."

As emergency vehicles filled the area, Berlin police appealed to the public to avoid the area and stay at home.

Facebook has set up a "Safety Check" page for people affected to let their loved ones know they are safe.

Terror attack?

The market is situated at the foot of the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church, which was kept as a bombed-out ruin after World War Two.

"We are investigating whether it was a terror attack but do not yet know what was behind it," a police spokesman told AFP news agency.

"One person was detained. The cab of the truck was found empty."

A British eyewitness, Mike Fox, told The Associated Press at the scene that the large lorry had missed him by only about 3m as it drove into the market, tearing through tables and wooden stands.

"It was definitely deliberate," said the tourist, visiting from Birmingham.

He said he had helped people who appeared to have broken limbs, and that others were trapped under Christmas stands.

Jan Hollitzer, deputy editor in chief of Berliner Morgenpost, told CNN: "I heard a big noise and then I moved on the Christmas market and saw much chaos... many injured people. It was really traumatic."

The Berliner Zeitung reports that police have set up a meeting point for relatives at the scene.

A photographer for the DPA news agency said that armed police were at an entrance to the nearby zoo.

Images of the lorry show it was registered in neighbouring Poland.

The incident evoked memories of the lorry attack on Bastille Day crowds in the French city of Nice on 14 July, when 86 people were killed. That attack was claimed by so-called Islamic State.

A series of small-scale attacks by Islamist militants alarmed Germany earlier this year.

Link to Article - Video - Photos:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38373867

German security services admit they have the WRONG man after arresting Pakistani asylum seeker, 23, over Berlin Christmas market massacre that left 12 dead

Security sources have told one German newspaper the real killer could still be on loose with a gun

Senior police chief said: 'We have wrong man. Perpetrator is armed, at large and can cause further damage'

Arrested Pakistani asylum seeker Naved B, 23, entered country under false name and has criminal record

Asylum seeker was living inside hangar for immigrants at a Berlin airport since raided by commandos at 4am

At least 48 injured and 12 dead after truck mowed down shoppers at 40mph in a busy Christmas market

Driver steered at crowds - including children - along 80 metre stretch of pavement packed with stalls

Masked killer fled scene but was pursued by 'hero' witness who chased him on foot and led police to him

Polish-registered lorry understood 'stolen by hijacker', who may have murdered driver Lukasz Urban

Angela Merkel says Germany is in 'mourning' - but terror attack could be hammer blow to 2017 election hopes

The Berlin Christmas market killer may still be on the loose with a gun and ready to inflict 'further damage' 12 hours after an asylum seeker from Pakistan was chased down and arrested, a senior police chief said today.

Detectives interrogating suspect Naved B, 23, have said he has no blood on his clothes, no injuries and denies hijacking a 25-tonne lorry and using it to murder 12 people and injure 48 more last night.

A security services source, a senior police officer, told die Welt newspaper: 'We have the wrong man. So we have a new situation. The true perpetrator is still armed, at large and can cause further damage.'

At 7pm last night a juggernaut laden with steel cargo turned off its lights and ripped through stalls and shoppers at 40mph on Breitscheidplatz Square, outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in the German capital's main shopping area.

Witnesses said victims including children were sent flying like bowling pins and sucked under the wheels leaving 'rivers of blood' as the killer driver steered at them before jumping out of the cab and racing from the scene.

Police said a 'hero' witness in the Christmas market gave chase on foot while giving officers second-by-second updates on his phone, but some sources say Naved B is the wrong man.

The lorry's original Polish driver, Lukasz Urban, a father of one, was transporting steel beams into Germany, but was found shot in the cab after the crash. The gun has not been found.

The terror attack could be a political disaster for Angela Merkel, who will seek a historic fourth term as German Chancellor next year. The German leader has staked much of her political capital in opening up Germany's doors to refugees and in doing so divided a reunited land.

PLEASE follow link below to FULL Article - Shocking Photos - Videos:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -dead.html

I imagine if witnesses had hunt and lynched the 'wrong man'

He might be suspected only because of his dark skin.

Tunisian sought over market deaths

German police are searching for a Tunisian over Monday's Berlin Christmas market attack, media reports say.

According to a temporary-stay permit found in the cab of the lorry that ploughed into crowds, the man, named as Anis A, was born in 1992 in the city of Tataouine, the reports say.

A police operation is said to be under way in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia where the permit was issued.

Reports say the suspect may have been injured in a struggle with the driver.

According to the newspapers Allgemeine Zeitung and Bild, the Tunisian suspect is aged 21 or 23 and is known by three different names.

Broadcaster N-TV said "measures are now imminent" in North Rhine-Westphalia but there are no details.

Twelve people died and 49 were injured when the truck was driven into crowds at the Breitscheidplatz Christmas market.

So-called Islamic State (IS) said one of its militants carried out the attack, but has offered no evidence.

It has emerged that the original driver of the truck may have fought the attacker as the vehicle was being driven into the market.

Polish citizen Lukasz Urban was found dead on the passenger seat with gunshot and stab wounds.

Investigators quoted by German media say there is evidence that, despite being stabbed, Mr Urban wrestled him for the steering wheel.

One official quoted by Bild newspaper said it appeared from the post-mortem examination that the driver had survived up to the attack and was shot dead when the truck came to a halt. No gun has been recovered.

Ariel Zurawski, the owner of the Polish transport company, said he had been asked to identify Mr Urban from photographs.

"His face was swollen and bloodied. It was really clear that he was fighting for his life," he told broadcaster TVN.

Company manager Lukasz Wasik described Mr Urban as a "good, quiet and honest person" and said he believed he would have defended the truck "to the end".

Police say they are acting on hundreds of tips from the public and are examining DNA traces from the cab of the truck.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said he was confident that the person responsible would be caught soon.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38392128

Berlin Truck Attacker Was No Lone Wolf, German Authorities Say

There’s evidence that what at first appeared to be a solo attack in Berlin could be the work of an ISIS cell.

Germany’s most wanted jihadist will spend his 24th birthday on the run.

Anis Amri, who turns 24 on Thursday, was named on Wednesday as the lead suspect in Monday’s deadly attack on a Berlin Christmas Market. He was reportedly identified from official documents left behind in the truck’s cab.

But German authorities also say the Tunisian man had ties to a notorious group of local ISIS sympathizers led by a man named Abu Walaa, who was arrested in November alongside four others accused of operating an ISIS recruitment network.

Der Spiegel, citing local officials, said that Amri and Abu Walaa were in “regular contact.”

If that’s the case, what first was considered to be a “lone wolf” attack in Germany—the first successful terrorist operation there since the 9/11 attacks—could instead be the work of an ISIS cell.

Abu Walaa—whose real name is Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah—is an Iraqi-born preacher who serves a mosque in Hildesheim, about three hours from Berlin. The 32-year-old had styled himself as a sheikh who gives religious and marital advice, often in videos that never show his visage. iPhone and Android stores even offer an “Abu Walaa” app. A Facebook page devoted to the “sheikh,” featuring videos of him sermonizing in German and Arabic, has 25,000 followers. Only ever photographed or filmed from behind, and dressed in a hooded black cloak, he is known popularly as the “preacher without a face.”

Abu Walaa reportedly gave sermons urging his listeners to join the jihad, and his mosque was raided by police during the summer. Among other things, he is suspected of links to an attack on a Sikh temple in April of this year.

But that may have been just the start. Germany’s intelligence community suggests Abu Walaa is actually “the worst of all” thanks to information coming from conversations with returning ISIS fighters. (Upward of 800 Germans have gone off to join ISIS in Syria and Iraq, authorities say.) A 22-year-old defector from the terrorist group told German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung that Abu Walaa was an ISIS recruiter and the group’s top leader in Germany.

He was arrested in a raid in North Rhine-Westphalia in early November, owing to information obtained by authorities from “debriefings” of returning foreign ISIS fighters.

(“The five accused formed a pan-regional Salafist-jihadist network, with the accused Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A. taking on the leading role,” the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement after the arrest.)

One of them, a man identified as 22-year-old Anil O., was interviewed by Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Turkey after he defected from the terrorist group. Anil O. claimed to have renounced ISIS’s ideology, then identified Abu Walaa as his original recruiter. The Iraqi, he said, is ISIS’s “number one in Germany.”

German police infiltrated the preacher’s entourage and gleaned vital intelligence about its activities and intentions. According to details from the prosecutor’s office files, the cell around Abu Walaa was planning to attack police stations in 2015. It also considered laying traps for law enforcement, for instance by phoning in false emergencies and then killing the responding officers when they arrived on scene.

Most ominously, the use of trucks loaded with explosives and the targeting of large crowds was also part of the cell’s planning. Agents in the network had gone so far as to buy silencers with the money stolen from various robberies.

Anis Amri, the man accused of the Berlin truck attack, had been under observation by local authorities for more than six months, from March to September 2016. He was suspected of planning to commit robberies to get money in order to buy automatic weapons.

According to German magazine Focus, Amri was radicalized by two particular followers of Abu Walaa: Boban S. from Dortmund and another named Hasan S. in Duisburg, both towns in North Rhine-Westphalia. Boban S., a Serbian-German, ran an ad hoc Islamic center out of his apartment, along with his German girlfriend. Genders were segregated at these pro-ISIS “conferences,” with the women veiled and the men in long beards and robes. There is as yet no evidence that Amri visited Boban S.’s apartment.

Amri is said to have been given two options for carrying out jihadist operations: He could either leave for Syria or Iraq and fight for ISIS on the Middle Eastern battlefield, or he could perpetrate an attack on German soil. This proposal is said to have been signed off by Abu Walaa personally.

The role allegedly played by Abu Walaa in recruiting German-based jihadists bears a striking similarity to that played by another prominent ISIS recruiter in Europe, a portly 42-year-old named Khalid Zerkani.

A Moroccan-born native of the Brussels district of Molenbeek and nicknamed “Papa Noel”—or Father Christmas—owing to his penchant for doling out cash disbursements to young radicals eager to emigrate to Syria, Zerkani was arrested by Belgian police in 2014 and sentenced last year to 12 years in prison. The New York Times reported after the Brussels bombings that when Zerkani’s apartment was raided, texts entitled “Thirty-Eight Ways to Participate in Jihad” and “Sixteen Indispensable Objects to Own Before Going to Syria” were discovered on his computer.

His talent was for turning wayward teenagers of North African descent from petty gangsters into fully trained terrorists. He was a mentor to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the operational head of the 10-man Paris attackers ring and believed to be affiliated with Najim Laachraoui, the bomb maker for both that ISIS atrocity and the one that followed months later in Brussels. Between 2012 and 2014, an estimated 18 people in contact with Zerkani traveled to Syria including Souleymane Abrini, the brother of one of the Brussels attackers. Phone records retrieved by Belgian authorities also show that he made dozens of calls to known ISIS figures in the country.

Amri, the suspected Berlin attacker, was likewise drawn to a life of crime. He was under investigation over suspicions that he was planning robberies to fund his purchase of automatic weapons earlier in 2016, but that investigation was dropped due to lack of evidence. Instead, authorities found he was a small-time drug dealer, and weren’t able to keep him under full-time surveillance. Eventually, Amri managed to slip off their radar, perhaps using one of his many aliases.

The last time he’d been seen before the attack was late November or early December.

The Italian newspaper La Stampa claims that Amri arrived at the island of Lampedusa in 2011, under the guise of being a refugee. He committed various crimes there and was arrested by Italian police. He served four years in prison and then, after his release, headed directly to Germany.

Amri’s father told a local Tunisian radio station that Amri served four years in an Italian prison after setting a school on fire. He was also sentenced in absentia in Tunisia for violent crimes.

“When I saw the picture of my brother in the media, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’m in shock, and can’t believe it’s him who committed this crime,” Amri’s brother, Abdelkader, told Agence-France Press. “If he’s guilty, he deserves every condemnation. We reject terrorism and terrorists—we have no dealings with terrorists.”

But Amri was able to stay in Germany even after the country rejected his application for asylum. He claimed to not have travel documents, and Tunisia denied he was a citizen.

Berlin lorry massacre suspect was learning how to make bombs and was barred from flying to America because of his links to ISIS, US officials reveal

German police are slammed over blunders that let him go free

Police continue hunt for Tunisian asylum seeker Anis Amri in connection with Berlin attack

Security services face difficult questions as he should have been deported months ago

Was jailed for four years in Italy and convicted of aggravated theft with violence in Tunisia

The 24-year-old has at times used six different aliases and three different nationalities

Suspected of dealing drugs and planning robberies to finance purchase of assault rifles

Officials denied four people with links to the suspect have been arrested in Dortmund today

He researched bomb-making, communicated with ISIS and was barred from flying to US

His ID was found in the truck used in Monday's attack which claimed 12 lives injured 48

The Berlin lorry massacre suspect was learning how to make bombs and was barred from flying to America because of his links to ISIS, US officials have revealed.

An international manhunt is continuing for failed Tunisian asylum seeker Anis Amri today with German police under fire for a string of blunders that let him go free.

The 24-year-old, who has a 100,000 euro reward on his head, was under the surveillance of German intelligence for several months following his arrival in the country in 2015. He had been arrested three times this year and his asylum application was rejected - but deportation papers were never served and he disappeared.

On Monday night, the Tunisian radical - who has used six different aliases and three different nationalities - is believed to have driven a 40-tonne truck through a Christmas market, killing 12 and injuring dozens.

It has since emerged that he was on the radar of US agencies who say Amri researched bomb-making online and was barred from flying to America having communicated with ISIS using the Telegram messaging service.

This morning, ahead of the scheduled reopening of the market in Berlin, German officials denied reports that there had been four arrests of people linked to the suspect. But pictures have emerged of raids taking place in the city of Dortmund.

Meanwhile, an Israeli woman, Dalia Elyakim, became the first named victim of the attack. She was standing with her husband Rami when the truck rammed into them.

Last night it emerged that Amri also tried to recruit an accomplice for a terror plot – which the authorities knew about – but that he still remained at large.

He was under investigation for planning a 'serious act of violence against the state' and counter-terrorism officials had exchanged information about him last month.

Reports suggest intelligence services might have even lost track of Amri as recently as just a few weeks ago after he went underground.

The potentially fatal mistakes heaped further shame on the German security services, who wasted several hours questioning an innocent Pakistani asylum seeker in the aftermath of the truck rampage, which killed 12 shoppers and wounded 48.

German police are in a desperate race to detain Amri, described as being probably armed and ‘highly dangerous’ before any further terrorist attack.

There were reports police had carried out raids on two addresses in Berlin last night but this was later denied by police.

Further reports emerged this morning that four people with links to the suspect had been detained, but this was also denied.

Last night it emerged Amri spent four years in an Italian prison for acts of violence and vandalism inside a migrant centre where he was being kept following his arrival in Europe. The prison in Palermo, Sicily, is where mafia bosses and gangsters are locked up.

Tunisian security officials also revealed he was convicted in absentia for aggravated theft with violence in his home country.

A senior foreign German politician today blamed the atrocity on 'institutional political correctness', arguing that Amri would not have been free to act if police had enforced the law.

Meanwhile a European arrest warrant issued for Amri reveals the fugitive has used at least six different aliases under three different nationalities. Photographs show how he has changed his appearance over the years.

Yesterday his family, who remain in Tunisia, were questioned by local police as his siblings condemned acts of terrorism, saying Amri 'deserves every condemnation' if he is guilty of the massacre.

Link to Full Article - Photos - Video:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... eveal.html

Berlin attack suspect Anis Amri killed in Milan

The Berlin market attack suspect Anis Amri has been shot dead by police in Milan, Italian state prosecutors say.

The man was approached by police during a routine patrol in the Sesto San Giovanni area of Milan at around 03:00 on Friday (02:00GMT).

The fingerprints of the dead man match those of the Tunisian main suspect in the truck bombing in Berlin on Monday which killed 12 people, reports say.

Germany has been on high alert after the attack which left 49 injured.

Separately, police arrested two people in the German city of Oberhausen on suspicion of planning an attack

German officials have confirmed Anis Amri's fingerprints were found inside the truck that was used to kill 12 people and wound 49 others in Berlin on Monday evening.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38415287

Berlin market attack: Tunisia arrests suspect Amri's nephew

Tunisian security forces have arrested the nephew of the Berlin market attacker Anis Amri and two other suspects, officials say.

The Tunisian interior ministry said the three, aged between 18 and 27, were members of a "terrorist cell", and that they were detained overnight.

Tunisian-born Amri, 24, was shot dead by police near the Italian city of Milan in the early hours of Friday.

Monday's lorry attack on the market left 12 people dead and 49 injured.

The interior ministry statement said Amri's nephew - the son of his sister - had confessed that he had communicated with his uncle via the encrypted chat application Telegram to evade security surveillance.

It said the three-member cell had been active in the towns of Fouchana, outside Tunis, and Oueslatia near Amri's hometown of Kairouan, about 150km (95 miles) south of the capital.

The statement added that Amri had sent money to his nephew to travel to Germany and join a jihadist group, and encouraged him to pledge allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.

Meanwhile, intelligence services in Spain are investigating a possible internet communication between Amri and a Spanish resident on 19 December, Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido told radio station COPE.

A looming threat: By Rana Jawad, Tunis

Tunisia has been under pressure to reform its security sector since it suffered from a spate of deadly attacks by IS militants in 2015.

With the help of countries including Germany and the UK, counter-terrorism operations and border security management have significantly improved, and the country has not witnessed a major terrorist attack this year.

But its nationals have been involved in some of the deadliest attacks to hit Europe this year. The attacks in Nice, and more recently in Berlin, were carried out by Tunisians who had moved to Europe long before IS existed, and neither appeared to have any Islamist ties before they left their homeland.

The latest arrests show that even if its nationals get radicalised abroad, that too can contribute to others joining their ranks from here. This is still a country that is contributing the largest number of militants in the region, and authorities here have not figured out how to put a stop to it.

Today, it is also facing the prospect of thousands trying to come back here as IS loses ground in some of its biggest strongholds in the region. People worry that the state is ill-prepared to deal with that influx, and there is concern over the threat that this looming reality poses domestically.

On Friday, IS released a video showing Amri pledging allegiance to its leader Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Amri was shot dead after opening fire on police officers during a routine police check in the Milan suburb of Sesto San Giovanni, after a three-day Europe-wide manhunt.

In the summer of 2015, a United Nations report said an estimated 5,500 Tunisians - mostly young people between the ages of 18 and 35 - were fighting in the ranks of terrorist organisations in Libya, Iraq, Syria and, to a lesser extent, Mali.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-38427469

Berlin market attack: Anis Amri's escape journey

Anis Amri, the jihadist who rammed a lorry into a crowd at a Berlin market on 19 December, died in an exchange of fire with Italian police in Milan in the early hours of Friday.

The fact that Europe's most-wanted man was able to evade capture for three days and cross several borders has raised a number of questions.

The first is: How did Amri get from Berlin to Milan, more than 1,000km (600 miles) away?

Officials are tight-lipped on the subject, but French and Italian media have piece together details of the last stages of his journey. They say two train tickets found on Amri after he died show he travelled through France.

The first was for a journey from the city of Lyon to Chambery, in the French Alps, on Thursday afternoon.

The second ticket, later that day, was from Chambery for Milan, with some reports that he stopped in Turin on the way.

The fugitive is said to have arrived at in Milan at 01:00 on Friday. From the main station, he somehow made his way to the suburb of Sesto San Giovanni.

By then, authorities had clearly long lost his trail. It was a routine police stop at about 03:00 that led to his death: he drew a gun, wounding an officer before being shot dead by another.

'Needle in a haystack'

What about the first part of Amri's journey, from Berlin to Lyon? This part remains unclear.

Security services are sifting through surveillance footage and various train stations. But the search is unlikely to yield results soon. "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack," one security official told Le Parisien newspaper.

But foremost on many people's minds is the question of apparent security failures.

Germany issued a European arrest warrant for Amri on Wednesday. Pictures of the suspect, along with his various aliases, had been widely publicised.

France - which boosted security following attacks in 2015 - had further reinforced checks at key transport hubs.

Opposition politicians have been quick to what they see as a major embarrassment.

A spokesman for French centre-right presidential candidate François Fillon said: "It beggars belief that a terrorist sought by police across Europe was able to enter the country, obviously bearing weapons, and then leave undetected."

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right, Eurosceptic National Front, said: "This flight though two of three countries epitomises the total security catastrophe that is Europe's [passport-free] Schengen area."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38425945

well there is no border check in EU except UK. So it was not surprising for him to reach Milan from Berlin easily without detection.

Londoner wrote:well there is no border check in EU except UK. So it was not surprising for him to reach Milan from Berlin easily without detection.

Good thing he could not come here so easily

But I would have expected, that in this instance, there would have been some form of vigilance or security to catch a mass murdering terrorist

Perhaps it is Europe's intention to allow ISIS completely free range across it's entirety

After Berlin attack, Europe weighs freedom against security

Open borders symbolize liberty and forward thinking for many Europeans — but they increasingly look like the continent's Achilles' heel.

Europe's No. 1 terrorism suspect crossed at least two borders this week despite an international manhunt, and he was felled only by chance, in a random ID check in a Milan suburb. The bungled chase for Berlin market attack suspect Anis Amri is just one example of recent cross-border security failures that are emboldening nationalists fed up with European unity. Extremist violence, they argue, is too high a price to pay for the freedom to travel easily.

Defenders of the EU's border-free zone say the security failures show the need for more cooperation among European governments, even shared militaries — not new barriers. Hidebound habits of hoarding intelligence within centuries-old borders are part of the problem, they contend.

But their arguments are criticized by the likes of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who is hoping to win France's presidency in May.

"The myth of total free movement in Europe, which my rivals are clinging to in this presidential election, should be definitively buried. Our security depends on it," she said in a statement Friday, calling Europe's free-travel zone a "total security catastrophe."

That poses a dilemma for European Union devotees like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, facing a re-election battle next year.

Merkel's defense of the EU, and the welcoming hand she extended to Syrian war refugees, were once seen as assets, signs of her moral authority. Today, with anti-immigrant, anti-establishment sentiment rising across Europe, they are threatening to become liabilities.

Countless numbers of people cross borders in the 26-country Schengen travel zone every day, thanks to a 31-year-old system encompassing nearly 400 million people that has dramatically boosted trade and job prospects across the world's largest collective economy.

It's a pillar of a system designed to prevent new world wars, yet it is a system under growing strain. While EU countries debated over how to manage an influx of migrants last year, eastern nations rebuilt border fences and exposed EU weaknesses.

The German far right is insisting on closing the country's borders. Merkel's conservatives are suggesting "transit zones" to hold migrants at the borders while their identities are confirmed, and making it easier to hold people in pre-deportation detention.

Berlin truck attacker Amri is a painful reminder of how Islamic extremists have used Europe's open borders to attack the principles of tolerance they are meant to epitomize.

After migrating illegally from Tunisia in 2011, he was imprisoned for burning down a migrant detention center in Italy. When freed, attempts to deport him to Tunisia failed for bureaucratic reasons. He subsequently traveled to Switzerland and then Germany, where he apparently fell under the influence of a radical network accused of recruiting for the Islamic State group.

Although Germany rejected his asylum application last summer and flagged him as a potential terror threat, authorities patiently waited for Tunisia to produce the required paperwork before deporting him.

Just as the deportation was being finalized Monday, Amri is believed to have hijacked a truck and rammed it into holiday crowds at a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 and injuring dozens.

He evaded an international manhunt for more than three days, apparently slipping into France — possibly with a pistol in his pocket — and then Italy before stumbling into a standard ID check in suburban Milan, where he died in a shootout with police.

Germany, France and Italy have failed to explain how he escaped the dragnet.

"Movement from one country to another in Europe is easy, especially for someone like Anis Amri, who had lived in Europe for several years" and knew which borders were easier to cross, said Tunisian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bouraoui Limam.

France is especially embarrassed.

It has been under high security as part of a state of emergency since last year, and the French are acutely concerned about train security after American passengers thwarted an attack on an Amsterdam-Paris train in 2015.

Yet French President Francois Hollande visited the Alpine town of Chambery on the same day that Amri is believed to have passed through its train station en route to Italy, unnoticed by border guards or the president's security detail.

The next morning, as Italian police were identifying Amri's body, France's interior minister visited a Paris train station to talk about the vigorous transport security in place for the holidays.

France's far right and the conservative opposition have assailed the Socialist government as lax.

"How could this person enter in Europe without being monitored? How could we let him settle in Europe?" said Eric Ciotti, lawmaker for the conservative Republicans.

What's worse, it was not the first time.

Last year, hours after Islamic State extremists killed 130 people at multiple targets in Paris, key suspect Salah Abdeslam fled to Belgium despite increased checks on both the French and Belgian borders. It took authorities four months to find him. Further, Abdeslam, a French national, had traveled through the Italian port of Bari on a roundtrip journey to Greece in August, months before the attack.

And in 2014, Mehdi Nemmouche allegedly killed four people at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, then crossed into France and traveled to the Mediterranean city of Marseille before being picked up in a police check.

Security and migration will be central issues in elections in the coming year in Germany, France and the Netherlands, all founding nations of the EU. And related fears could be key to fueling opposition calls for an early election in Italy after its recent political crisis.

The leader of Italy's anti-migrant Northern League, Matteo Salvini, called Saturday for closing and reinforcing Europe's borders after the Berlin attack.

"I don't want another two or three massacres before Europe wakes up," Salvini said.

A candidate for France's left-wing primary next month, Vincent Peillon, pleaded for joint European rules on borders, defense and intelligence.

"It's all of Europe that is being attacked," he said.

Le Pen's far-right National Front party wants to retrench rather than reach out, to "give France back full control over its sovereignty."

As Europeans head home for the holidays, many crossing multiple borders on the way without showing a single passport or changing any currency, people are asking themselves: Is it all worth it?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/art ... urity.html

German authorities discussed Berlin suspect 7 times before attack

German security officials met 7 times to discuss the potential threat posed by Anis Amri, suspected of carrying out the Berlin Christmas market attack, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The details emerged from a committee meeting in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia Thursday. Authorities had begun monitoring Amri, who entered Germany in summer 2015, in December of the same year. They became aware of his desire to plan terror attacks in Germany and were informed about a planned robbery in Berlin to fund the purchase of weapons.

It emerged earlier Thursday that Amri had used 14 different identities since he entered the country.

In September and October 2016, police in North Rhine-Westphalia received tips that Amri had contacted Islamic State sympathizers in Berlin, and “wanted to carry out a project” in Germany.

http://www.politico.eu/article/german-a ... anis-amri/