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Berlin attack suspect Anis Amri 'shot dead in Milan, Italy' Berlin attacker Anis Amri killed in police shootout in Milan, interior minister confirms
(35 minutes later)
The suspected Berlin attacker has been shot dead in the Italian city of Milan, according to security sources. The suspected Berlin attacker has been killed in a shootout with police in the Italian city of Milan.
There was no official confirmation the man killed during a shootout with police was Anis Amri but the Italian interior minister was due to hold a press conference. Marco Minniti, Italy’s interior minister, said police were conducting a routine patrol at 3am local time (2am GMT) when they stopped a man resembling Anis Amri.
The man pulled out a gun when officers approached during a routine patrol in the northern city this morning. “At the moment he was stopped, the man without hesitating took a pistol out of his rucksack and shot the police after they asked him for identification documents,” he told a press conference.
One officer was injured in the ensuing exchange of gunfire, local media reported. “The patrol immediately responded to the shooting. A police officer was injured but fortunately he is recovering in hospital.
It came as a separate police operation continued in Denmark after a man matching his description was spotted in Aalborg. “State police officers responded and the person who attacked our patrol was killed.
“A man with a description similar to the perpetrator of the incident in Berlin on 19 December has been observed in the area around Eternitten in Aalborg,” said a spokesperson for North Jutland Police. “Investigations have revealed that the person killed, without any shadow of a doubt, is Anis Amri.”
The person seen was described as a man aged between 20 and 30, wearing a black hat, glasses and unshaven with a black beard. He was carrying a black shoulder bag. Photos showed blood in a road in the district of Sesto San Giovanni, where forensic investigators were collecting evidence.
Police asked members of the public to stay away from the Eternitten area as search operations continued. A train ticket found in Amri's rucksack showed he had travelled to Italy from Paris, the DPA news agency reported. The possibility he managed to cross two international borders and enter the French capital while under a European arrest warrant was likely to provoke fresh criticism of EU-wide security efforts.
Amri, a 24-year-old Tunisian man, has been the subject of a Europe-wide manhunt since being identified as the main suspect in an attack on a Berlin Christmas market. The pistol Amri produced may be the same weapon he used to kill the driver of the lorry he used to conduct the massacre.
His fingerprints were found inside a hijacked lorry used to massacre 12 people and injure more than 50 others in an atrocity claimed by Isis Amri is believed to have hijacked the vehicle from its Polish driver Lukasz Urban as he was parked up in Berlin on Monday afternoon.
A gun used to shoot the lorry’s Polish driver dead was not found at the scene, prompting warnings that the suspect could be “armed and dangerous”. The lorry’s GPS showed it moved backwards and forwards “as if someone was learning how to drive it” before it drove around six miles to the Christmas market, accelerating to plough into stalls packed with locals and tourists.
Amri fled after the lorry came to a stop, leaving Mr Urban dead in the cabin with knife and bullet wounds. The gun was not recovered, prompting warnings during he was “armed and dangerous” from German prosecutors.
They offered a €100,000 (£85,000) reward for information leading to Amri’s arrest but his eventual discovery on Friday appeared to be coincidental.
No suggestion the suspected Isis supporter was in Italy was made public, with reports of the shooting coming as Danish police hunted a man matching Amri’s description in Aalborg.
There was also speculation he may have been hiding out in Berlin after police footage caught him entering a mosque linked to Islamist extremists in the German capital hours after Monday’s attack.
German authorities had attempted to deport the 24-year-old in June after rejecting his asylum application but a bureaucratic dispute with Tunisia over missing documents proving Amri’s nationality meant he could not be ejected from the country.
Revelations that he had been put under surveillance for six months after being linked to a previous terror plot stoked anger against security services for letting him slip through the net.
Amri’s brothers believe he may have been radicalised while serving a prison sentence for arson in Sicily, while he was wanted for armed robbery in Tunisia and known to deal drugs in Berlin.