Christmas shopping and gift giving has always been a tradition in every part of the world. A lot of bazars, night markets are almost in every corner offering sale items for each merrymaker.
But in Berlin, twelve were dead and 48 are injured at a Christmas market on December 20, the supposed to be a happy day to look for a gift became a nightmare. The crash took place when a lorry, turned into the Budapesterstrasse near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church.
According to The Telegraph, the lorry had Polish number plates and is registered to a delivery company named ARIEL Żurawski. It travelled as far as 80 metres into the Christmas market before it came to a stop.
Eye-witnesses heard a loud bang, saw wooden cabins and crushed bodies of the market goers. The monstrous vehicle has a broken windscreen and the trailer were dragged away disjointedly from the accident scene near Berlin's zoo. Authorities assumed that the original driver of the truck had been shot.
They cited that they found a dead man inside the truck, he is a Polish citizen but explained that it appears that he was not in control of the truck. Berlin police further said that they assumed that the truck was stolen from a construction site in Poland.
"The company said the vehicle had left Poland for Berlin earlier in the day but that contact with the driver was lost at around 3pm local time (2pm GMT) and the firm believed the lorry may have been hijacked," Telegraph reported.
On-going investigations are still on high and reports said that they think that the man from Pakistan who was arrested as a suspect was not the actual criminal. "We have the wrong man. And therefore, a new situation. The true perpetrator is still armed, at large and can cause fresh damage," a senior police chief quoted in The Irish Times.
German Interior Minister Thomas De Maiziere also attest that the detainee was an asylum seeker who was "probably from Pakistan." He said that the suspect had denied any involvement in the incident. Chancellor Angela Merkel said it had to be assumed the Christmas market incident was a terrorist attack. No one has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.
