Angela Merkel has described the Christmas market lorry attack in Berlin that killed at least 12 on Monday evening as a gruesome deed that would be particularly repugnant if it was confirmed to have been carried out by someone who came to the country as a refugee.

“For now we know little of this deed for certain,” the German chancellor, dressed in black, told a press conference. “But given the current information we have we have to assume we are dealing with a terrorist attack.”



Berlin Christmas market attack suspect 'an asylum seeker from Pakistan' – live Read more

Early on Tuesday morning, a special police commando unit stormed a refugee shelter in Berlin where the suspected driver of the lorry was registered.

The raid took place at 4am (0300 GMT), eight hours after the attack on the market in the German capital, which killed 12 people and injured about 48.

The refugee shelter is housed in a former hangar of the disused Tempelhof airport, which is home to about 2,000 refugees. Police seized a laptop and a mobile phone during the raid, but did not arrest anyone.

The suspected attacker, who was taken into custody shortly after the attack, is believed to be a 23-year-old of Pakistani origin who arrived in Germany via the so-called Balkan route used by refugees either in December last year or February this year. He has denied any involvement, interior minister Thomas de Maizière said. He was not known to security forces for any suspicious activity related to radicalism.

Merkel, who is standing for a fourth term in office in next autumn’s federal elections, said it would be a heavy burden to know the attack might have been carried out by an asylum seeker.

“It would be particularly hard to bear for all of us if it was confirmed that a person had committed this crime who had asked for protection and asylum in Germany,” she said, referring to the estimated 1 million people who came to Germany last autumn and who continue to arrive in large numbers.

“This would be particularly repugnant in the face of the many, many Germans who have dedicated themselves day after day to helping refugees, and in the face of the many people who actually need our protection and try to integrate into our country,” she said.

The number of victims rose overnight from nine to 12, as doctors in clinics around Berlin worked to save lives and treat injuries, including many cases of internal bleeding of people who were crushed by the truck.

The Polish-registered lorry careered into the busy Breitscheidplatz market at about 8pm (1900 GMT) on Monday. It had a run-up of about 80 metres before crashing into stalls and shoppers outside the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church.

One of the dead was the lorry’s registered driver, a Polish national who police said was shot in Potsdam, about nine miles west of Berlin, before the market attack. The Polish delivery company that owns the Scania lorry said it lost touch with its driver at 4pm local time after it crossed from Poland into Germany.

Reports detailing the arrest say the suspected driver was followed into the Tiergarten park by a witness who spotted him fleeing from the cab of the lorry. The witness reportedly ran behind him through the park, keeping in contact with police all the time. Officers apprehended the man at the Victory column, a landmark roundabout in central Berlin.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A man lights a candle near the scene, with a sign reading: ‘You live on in us. Berliners’ Photograph: Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters

Doctors treating patients at the scene and in hospitals across Berlin reported a high number of fractures and internal injuries – including bleeding and damaged organs. One medic said operations would be continuing through the night, with many of the injured in a life-threatening state. Off-duty doctors across Berlin were being brought in to help treat the wounded.



A witness told the Guardian the lorry hit the market at speed. “It was not an accident. The truck was doing 40mph. It was in the middle of a square, there are main roads either side, [where it could have come from]. But it showed no sign of slowing down,” said Emma Rushton, a British tourist.

She said the truck crashed into a stall only a few feet from where she and her friend were standing. “We heard a massive bang,” said Rushton. “About 8-10ft in front of us was where the lorry ploughed through. It ploughed through the stall where we bought our mulled wine.

“It ploughed through people and the wooden huts, it tore the lights down. Everything went dark, it was black and there was screaming. It was awful.”

Stephan Mayer, a CSU MP and home affairs spokesman, acknowledged that the attacker could have entered the country with refugees. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday, he said it was too early to draw conclusions about Merkel’s immigration policy.

He said: “There are clear hints that there is a terrorist background to this horrible attack. There are rumours that the attacker was either Pakistani or Afghan and he made it as a refugee to Germany, either last year or this year, and he lived for a long period of time in Berlin in a refugee camp.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The trailer of a truck stands beside destroyed Christmas market huts in Berlin. Photograph: Markus Schreiber/AP

The US president-elect, Donald Trump, described the incident as a terror attack and blamed “Islamist terrorists”.

The incident had echoes of the Nice truck attack in July, when a Tunisian-born French resident, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, drove a 19-tonne lorry into a crowd that had gathered for a Bastille Day firework display, killing 86 people and injuring hundreds.

French authorities said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had been inspired by Isis propaganda but no evidence had been found that the Islamist group had orchestrated the attack.