Berlin Attack Suspect Shot Dead

The wanted photo issued by German federal police on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2016 shows 24-year-old Tunisian Anis Amri who is suspected of being involved in the fatal attack on the Christmas market in Berlin on Dec. 19, 2016. (German police via AP)

Milan (AP) — Germany’s federal prosecutor says authorities are still trying to determine whether the man who carried out the deadly truck attack in Berlin had a network of supporters.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility. Suspect Anis Amri was shot dead by an Italian police officer overnight after he was asked to show identification outside a train station in Milan.

Authorities say Amri pulled out a gun and shot and wounded one officer.

Another officer shot him dead.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has expressed her relief that the suspect in the Berlin truck attack posed no further threat after he was shot dead by Italian police in Milan during the night.

Merkel told reporters in Berlin that she had ordered a comprehensive investigation into all angles of the case, after it emerged that German authorities had tracked Anis Amri for months this year on suspicion of planning an attack.

Merkel said “our democracy, our rule of law, our values and our humanity” were the alternatives to “the hate-fill world of terrorism” and would ultimately prevail.

Merkel also expressed her deep thanks to Italian authorities, and in particular to the two police officers who challenged Amri.

A German security official says the Berlin truck attack suspect has been linked to an extremist recruitment network allegedly run by a preacher arrested last month.

Holger Muench, the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, said Friday that Anis Amri’s name “has come up in the past” in connection with the network centering on a 32-year-old German-based Iraqi Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A., aka Abu Walaa. He wouldn’t elaborate.

Abu Walaa was arrested Nov. 8 with four other men, accused of being the ringleader of a group whose aim was to steer people to the Islamic State group in Syria.

Prosecutors say the network smuggled at least one young man and his family to Syria.