Berlin: One or more perpetrators remain on the loose in Germany after a Pakistani refugee detained on suspicion of carrying out a deadly truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market was released from custody.
The federal prosecutor's office in the city of Karlsruhe said that investigations had failed to prove conclusively that the 23-year-old committed any crime but authorities say the man has provided considerable information during questioning, although he denied involvement in the Monday evening attack.
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Suspected Berlin Christmas market attacker released
A man arrested on suspicion of killing 12 people by mowing through a Berlin Christmas market in a truck has been released..
Witnesses who claimed they had followed the man when he fled the crime scene had not had an uninterrupted view of him, and there was no recording of him in the cabin of the truck, investigations showed.
"We've got the wrong man and therefore a new situation. The true perpetrator is still armed, on the loose and can do fresh damage," German newspaper Die Welt cited a police official as saying earlier in the day.
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Writing on Twitter, German police urged Berliners to be "particularly alert".
The attack at the Christmas market in the west of the city left at least 12 dead and nearly 50 injured, 24 of whom have been released from hospital, German police said.
The Islamic State extremist group used its Amaq news outlet to claim responsibility, saying the attacker was a "soldier of the Islamic State" who acted in response to calls to target citizens of the coalition of states combating the organisation.
The claim, issued via Amaq and attributed to a "security source", is typical of how IS has declared itself responsible for previous attacks in Europe.
The brief claim did not name the attacker or shed any light on his fate. IS usually names attackers in statements that it issues later in its own name, not in initial claims via Amaq.
Rita Katz, director of jiahdist monitoring firm SITE, tweeted this was "the first Amaq claim for an attacker while still alive".
Police chief Holger Muench says six of the fatalities have been identified as German nationals, while five other bodies remain unidentified.
Among the dead was a Polish national who was a passenger in the truck and found shot dead at the scene. The murder weapon hasn't been recovered, said Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.
The Polish man was apparently alive at the time of the attack, Germany's tabloid Bild reported in its online edition. Investigators spoke of potential evidence of a struggle before the truck ploughed into the crowded market. He was found dead in the truck.
Germany's top prosecutor Peter Frank said that the method used in the attack was reminiscent of the truck attack in Nice, which left 86 people dead in July.
IS has been linked to three terrorist attacks on German soil this year.
The Christmas market carnage comes less than six months after two terrorist attacks claimed by Islamic State were carried out by people registered as asylum seekers in the country.
The attacks have led many to doubt Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to keep German borders open to refugees last year after with 890,000 migrants entering the country in 2015.
"Like millions of people in Germany, I am deeply saddened and horrified at what happened yesterday at Berlin's Breitscheidplatz," Merkel said in response to the attack. "We do not want to live in fear of evil."
The chancellor laid a white rose at a memorial outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in the heart of western Berlin.
Former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage used Twitter to blame Merkel for the Berlin attack.
He was swiftly rebuffed by Brendan Cox, husband of late British MP Jo Cox, who was murdered by a white supremacist in June.
@Nigel_Farage blaming politicians for the actions of extremists? That's a slippery slope Nigel
— Brendan Cox (@MrBrendanCox) December 20, 2016
Leaders across the region are being buffeted by an unprecedented combination of Islamist terrorism and political violence whose origins are complex and to which there is no obvious answer.
In western Europe, which holds a string of crucial elections next year, Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and other leaders are struggling to persuade the public that they can ensure security. Meanwhile, Monday's assassination of Russia's ambassador to Turkey by a gunman pledging vengeance for the fall of Aleppo shows how the chaos in Syria is reaching into the heart of Turkey.
Even so, the attacks in Ankara and Berlin, plus a shooting in a mosque in Zurich, appeared to be "more coincidental than really connected", said Blaise Misztal, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center's national security program in Washington.
"It's going to feed into a temptation to weave a single narrative that this is Islamic terrorism coming out of Syria," Misztal said in a phone interview. Yet this a "mistaken assessment," as "it's not a monolithic threat".
Merkel convened a meeting of her security cabinet to discuss lessons from the incident, adding that there remains much "that we don't know yet with the required certainty".
The investigation will turn up "every detail and we will prosecute as thoroughly as the law allows", she said.
DPA, Bloomberg