The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the truck attack on a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, an attack which claimed the lives of 12 people and injured 48 others. The extreme Muslim group said in its statement that “the attacker was a soldier of the Islamic State and carried out the attack in response” to what they claimed were “calls for targeting citizens of the Crusader coalition,” the term they used for the US-led coalition against the Muslim group. The claim of responsibility came a short while after German security forces decided to release the suspected terrorist, a Muslim migrant from Pakistan. The decision came after police indicated that no forensic evidence was found to attach the Pakistani man to the incident, prompting a new assessment that the perpetrator is on the run. Also, despite the claim of responsibility by the Islamic State, German officials refused to declare the attack as Islamic terrorism, stressing that investigators were following various leaders.
“Israel condemns what appears to be a terror attack in Germany. We send our condolences to the families of those who were killed, and of course to the government of Germany, and we wish a speedy recovery to the wounded, including an Israeli citizen. This attack joins other detestable attacks, terror is out bursting everywhere we can fend it off only by fighting it and we will defeat it, but we will defeat it much faster if all the free nations undergoing terror attacks will unite to fight terror,” said Netanyahu.
One of the injured victims was an Israeli national who sustained severe wounds, while his wife who went missing after the attack has yet to be found. Israel’s ambassador to Germany Yaakov Hadas-Handelsman issued a statement, saying that he hoped the Israeli woman was among the wounded victims, most of whom have yet to be identified. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that it was time for all free nations, which undergo terror attacks to unite in the fight against terror.
“Should this incident turn out to be an attack with an Islamist background – which so far we don’t know – then we know from the past that many who are still considering or have decided on an attack but have not yet carried it out take something like this as a reason to carry it out. This means that we can expect significant further attacks shortly after such an attack and the police have to react to that,” said Holger Munch, German chief of Federal Criminal Police. Six of those killed have been identified as Germans, and a man found shot and killed in the truck’s passenger seat was Polish. The other five people killed have not yet been identified. Twenty-five people remained hospitalized, 14 with serious injuries.