Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Update, Dec. 20, 9:10 a.m.: The death toll from Monday night’s truck rampage in Berlin, which German authorities are now saying was likely a terrorist attack, has climbed to 12. Witnesses told the Wall Street Journal that the driver of the truck fled, and police say they have taken into custody a man believed to have been behind the wheel. According to the Berlin police, that individual has so far denied involvement in the incident.
Original post: At least nine people are dead and 50 injured in Berlin after a truck ran into an outdoor Christmas market on Monday evening. Details at this point are scarce, but according to the New York Times, police in Berlin are calling the incident a deliberate attack. A witness told CNN that the truck did not slow down as it moved through the crowd gathered in the popular public square beside Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.
Wall Street Journal Berlin correspondent Zeke Turner reports that Berlin police have arrested one person, believed to be the driver, while another person who was in the truck died during the crash.
If this was a terrorist act, it mirrors a similar one that occurred in the city of Nice in July. That attack, which was carried out by a man from Tunisia who appeared to sympathize with ISIS, involved a cargo truck mowing down crowds of people celebrating Bastille Day, and left 86 dead and nearly 500 injured.
In 2014, Slate’s Josh Keating explained that driving a car or truck into a crowded public place has been endorsed in Inspire, the English-language online magazine published by al-Qaida, and is considered a low-cost method of carrying out attacks for would-be terrorists who do not have access to explosives. Here’s Keating:
The [Inspire] article recommends that practitioners take care to gather enough speed to “achieve maximum carnage” once crowds begin to scatter, and to choose their targets carefully. “If you can get through to ‘pedestrian only’ locations that exist in some downtown (city center) areas, that would be fabulous,” the author, editor-in-chief Yahya Ibrahim, writes. … What ramming lacks in effectiveness, it makes up for in ease of preparation. It’s not hard to get your hands on a car, and driving one at high speeds into a crowd is a lot easier than building a bomb. Inspire notes that it is “a simple idea and there is not much involved in its preparation.”
