December 19, 2017•Update: December 19, 2017
By Ayhan Simsek
BERLIN
Germany’s leaders gathered on Tuesday to commemorate the one-year anniversary of a truck attack which killed 12 people on a Christmas market in Berlin.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, parliamentary president Wolfgang Schauble and ministers gathered with relatives of the victims plus survivors at Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz square, where the attack took place.
They paid tribute to the victims by lighting candles and laying flowers at a new memorial.
Merkel, who faced criticism in the media for purported security failures and inadequate support for the relatives of the victims, told reporters her government had drawn lessons from the attack.
“Today is a day of mourning, but also a day of willingness to do things better in future, that went wrong in the past,” she stressed.
Anis Amri, a 24-year-old asylum seeker from Tunisia, hijacked a truck and drove it into a Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring more than 50 others.
Amri had recorded a video before the attack and pledged allegiance to the Daesh terrorist group.
A few days after the attack, he was killed in a shootout by police in Italy.
Recent parliamentary investigations have revealed Amri was known to German police and intelligence services for various crimes such as selling drugs. He had been placed under surveillance last year for several weeks for his suspected ties to radical groups.
