Hurtling towards a Christmas market packed with shoppers, this is the 25-tonne lorry used in the Berlin terror attack just moments before the massacre.

Dashcam footage shows the hijacked truck speeding past waiting cars as it careers towards the pedestrianised street.

Moments later dozens of people are seen running for their lives as the lorry ploughs into the crowded market, killing 12 people and injuring 48 others.

Polish lorry driver Lukasz Urban, 37, who was ambushed hours before, is believed to have still been alive at the time the video was filmed.

The father-of-one spent his final moments wrestling with the hijacker in a desperate attempt to regain control of the out-of-control vehicle, it is claimed.

Devastation: A hijacked lorry claimed 12 lives and injured dozens of others when it crashed into a Berlin Christmas market on Monday night. A new video has emerged showing the 25-tonne vehicle, pictured, careering down the road moments before the terror attack

Carnage: The lorry was deliberately steered into the market, which was packed with shoppers. Victims including children were sent flying like bowling pins and crushed under the lorry

Deadly: The truck, laden with steel cargo, was hijacked, with the lorry's computer system recording a series of stop-start manoeuvres 'as if someone was learning how to drive'

The video emerged as police continued their Europe-wide hunt for Anis Amri, the Tunisian ISIS fanatic suspected of committing the atrocity

The video emerged as police launched a series of raids across Germany as they continued their Europe-wide hunt for Anis Amri, the Tunisian ISIS fanatic suspected of committing the atrocity.

On Monday afternoon the truck, laden with steel cargo, was hijacked, with the lorry's computer system recording a series of stop-start manoeuvres 'as if someone was learning how to drive'.

At 7pm local time it drove around the Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz Square several times, as if to build up speed, before switching off its headlights and charging at 40mph into a crowd.

Victims including children were sent flying like bowling pins and crushed under the 25-ton HGV's wheels, leaving 'rivers of blood' as the lunatic driver deliberately steered at them, before jumping out of the cab and racing from the massacre.

The video was filmed from a road perpendicular to the one on which the lorry was travelling.

Seconds from disaster: Dashcam footage shows the hijacked truck (circled in red) speeding past waiting cars as it careers towards the pedestrianised street

The lorry, seen in the far left of the frame, sped down the road at speeds of up to 40mph before crashing into a Berlin Christmas market in a terror attack that claimed 12 lives

As the motorist comes to a stop at a set of traffic lights, the truck speeds past the waiting vehicles and towards the twinkling lights of the Christmas market.

Moments later terrified shoppers sprint away from the carnage of the market.

The actual moment of impact cannot be seen.

Mr Urban had driven to the German capital from Turin to deliver steel and was ambushed as he returned to his truck from a kebab shop.

He appears to have been stabbed and beaten and police sources believe he was alive when the 25-tonne truck was steered at crowds.

German media published CCTV images which claimed to show Amri visiting a nearby mosque before and after the attack. Pictured, a man alleged to be Amri hours at the mosque hours after the attack

A man, alleged to be Amri, was seen at the same mosque on two different days in the week leading up to the atrocity. Pictured, a man alleged to be Amir on December 14, left, and 15

Extreme measures to capture prime suspect The €100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Anis Amri, the Tunisian prime suspect in Berlin's deadly truck attack, is a rarity in Europe. Rewards in recent years have been offered over war crimes, a political assassination and a far-left group's assault on the US embassy in Athens. One example is notorious Serbian war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic, who eluded arrest for 16 years, saw his bounty go up to 10 million euros ($14 million at the time) before he was finally arrested in May 2011 to face trial in The Hague. However, no-one cashed in on the reward, for the 'Butcher of Bosnia' was tracked down through intelligence work. By contrast, in the United States the practice is well entrenched, going back to the Wild West days of Jesse James and Billy the Kid. The highest reward ever offered by the FBI was $25 million for information leading to the capture of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, killed in a US Navy Seal raid in Pakistan in May 2011. The United States last Friday matched that figure for the shadowy leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, more than doubling the $10 million originally on his head to $25 million. Advertisement

The masked ISIS terrorist then shot him in the head before fleeing the scene.

German police face difficult questions over their handling of the investigation.

Yesterday it emerged Amri was recorded by the security services making the offer to a hate preacher two months ago, sources revealed.

But in yet another blunder by the German authorities, which were monitoring his movements, he was left at large.

Suspect: Amri made his way from Tunisia to Germany after entering Europe through Italy

Police launched a series of raids yesterday amid reports four people have been arrested

Reports also claimed Amri was sentenced to five years in absentia in his home country of Tunisia for an armed robbery.

And it was reported that he was given a jail term there in 2010 for stealing a HGV similar to the one used in the attack on Monday night.

A Europe-wide manhunt including a series of raids across Germany has so-far failed to flush out the terror suspect.

However, a video was uncovered from one of Amri’s Facebook accounts showing him walking the streets of the German capital in the run-up to the atrocity. It is claimed it could have been a reconnaissance video as final preparations were being made for the truck rampage.

German police have been accused of a series of blunders in the investigation. Pictures show the market from above yesterday morning. It has reopened in the wake of the tragedy

Mourning: A market worker looks at some of the tributes left at the scene of the atrocity

Truck attacker was a troubled inmate in Italy Italian authorities say the Tunisian fugitive in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack was a problem inmate when he was in Italy. The Italian justice ministry on Thursday confirmed media reports that 24-year-old Anis Amri was repeatedly admonished and transferred among Sicilian prisons for bad conduct. Prison records say he bullied inmates and tried to spark insurrections. In all, Amri was held in six different prisons on Sicily, where he served three years for setting a fire at a refugee center and making threats, among other charges. But Italy apparently recorded no signs that Amri was becoming radicalized to embrace extremist violence. Amri reached Italy in 2011, along with tens of thousands of young Tunisian men who arrived by boat during the Arab Spring revolutions. Advertisement

The Facebook account also carried a picture of a lion – a key motif used by jihadists to symbolise honour. According to intelligence sources Amri may have been planning the attack since the spring.

US officials say the suspect, who has six aliases, three fake passports and repeatedly tried to change his appearance, was also learning how to make bombs and was barred from flying to America.

The latest blunders by the German security services emerged a day after it was revealed Amri was under surveillance for several months earlier this year, amid fears he was a terrorist. He was arrested three times for various offences and his asylum application was rejected in the summer. But his deportation papers were never served, allowing him to remain on the streets.

MOTHER BEGS HIM TO SURRENDER Anis Amri’s family urged him to surrender to police yesterday. His brother Abdelkader Amri said: ‘If he is listening to me, I tell him: ‘Present yourself [to detectives], so the family can rest easier. If my brother is behind the attack, I say to him “You dishonour us”.’ But speaking outside the family home in the town of Oueslatia, some 30 miles from Kairouan in eastern Tunisia, he insisted: ‘I’m sure he can’t have done this.’ It was from there that Amri set off in 2011, like so many young North Africans, in search of a better life in Europe. His mother, Nour El Houda Hassani, 65, added: ‘I want the truth to be revealed about my son. ‘If he is the perpetrator of the attack, let him assume his responsibilities and I’ll renounce him before God. If he didn’t do anything, I want my son’s rights to be restored.’ His sister Najoua insisted the family has ‘nothing to do with terrorism’ but acknowledged that her fugitive brother ‘is no angel’. Appeal: Amris’s mother Advertisement

Yesterday it was also confirmed that Amri’s fingerprints had been found on the steering wheel of the hijacked lorry used in the terror attack. His wallet has already been found under the seat following a belated detailed search of the cab.

German prosecutors said they ‘believe ... Anis Amri was steering the truck.’ Amri’s offer to be an Islamic State suicide bomber were revealed in wire taps two months ago, when he told a hate preacher he was willing to blow himself up – and had also inquired about buying automatic weapons from a police informant.

But German officers still did not believe they had enough evidence to arrest him, according to media reports. As part of yesterday’s raids, four men were held in Dortmund, north-west Germany, where Amri once lived with a hate preacher.

A flat was also raided in Berlin and a shelter for asylum seekers was searched in Emmerich, eastern Germany, where one man was questioned. Angela Merkel said she was confident Amri would be arrested ‘soon’ – despite police and security services missing a string of opportunities to detain him before Monday’s attack.

The Chancellor, under pressure over her migration policies and the failure to deport Amri, added she was ‘proud of the calm response’ to the massacre.

The 24-year-old apparently arrived in Germany in July last year having left Tunisia for Italy, where he claimed asylum in 2011. He spent three years in prison in Sicily for various offences including setting fire to a refugee centre.

But Italian officials apparently recorded no sign that Amri was becoming radicalised and after being freed he made his way to Germany. His asylum application there was rejected in July, but he could not be deported because Tunisia initially claimed he was not a citizen and he did not have the correct papers to be repatriated.

On Wednesday it emerged Amri was monitored for several months by German authorities after they received a tip-off he may have been planning a break-in to buy automatic weapons for an attack.

But agencies stopped watching Amri in September after nothing was found to substantiate the original warning other than dealing drugs in a Berlin park and getting involved in a bar brawl.