Truck ploughs into crowd at Berlin market, nine dead

A truck has ploughed into a crowded Christmas market in the German capital, killing nine people.

A lorry has crashed into a Christmas market in Berlin Photo: Supplied / Periscope / Wicky Costello

Radio NZ,

20 December, 2016

Local media, citing police at the scene, said first indications pointed to a deliberate attack on the market.

Berlin police said nine people were dead and up to 50 injured.

Video footage from the scene showed stalls knocked over and people lying injured on the ground.

Police cars and ambulances converged on the scene.

A police spokesman told German media officers had arrested the suspected driver of the truck. Another person, described as the co-driver, died in the crash.

Images of the truck show it was registered in neighbouring Poland.

The incident occurred near the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm avenue in the west of the city.

The truck careered into the market at what would have been one of its most crowded times, when adults and children would gather in the traditional cluster of wooden stalls that sell food and Christmas goods.

A witness, Emma Rushton, said the truck "ploughed through" the market and that people had been crushed.

‏@ERushton

Lorry just ploughed through Christmas market in #berlin. There is no road nearby. People crushed. I am safe. I am safe

RETWEETS1,893
LIKES1,177

"I heard a big noise and then I moved on the Christmas market and saw much chaos...many injured people," Jan Hollitzer, deputy editor in chief of Berliner Morgenpost, told CNN. "It was really traumatic."

The truck crash comes five months after an attack in Nice, France, when a 19-tonne truck was driven along the beach front, mowing down people who had gathered to watch the fireworks on Bastille Day.

The attack killed 86 people and was claimed by Islamic State. Police shot dead the driver, Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, at the scene.

The incident occurred on the same day the Russian ambassador to Turkey was killed in a gun attack by a police officer in Ankara and three people were wounded in a shooting near an Islamic centre in central Zurich.