Europe scrambles to find Tunisian suspect in Berlin attack

Authorities across Europe scrambled on Thursday to track down a Tunisian man suspected of driving a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, as one of his brothers urged him to surrender.

Nearly three days after the deadly attack that killed 12 people and injured 48 others, the market in the center of the German capital reopened, with concrete blocks in place at the roadside to provide extra security. Organizers at the market decided to ditch party music or bright lighting, and Berliners and visitors have laid candles and flowers at the site in tribute.

German authorities issued a wanted notice for Anis Amri on Wednesday and offered a reward of up to 100,000 euros (USD 104,000) for information leading to the 24-year-old’s arrest, warning that he could be “violent and armed.” 

 The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and broadcasters NDR and WDR reported Thursday that Amri’s fingerprints were found on the driver’s door of the Polish-registered truck that caused the mayhem Monday night. The daily Berliner Zeitung reported that his fingerprints were found on the truck’s steering wheel.

The reports did not name sources and German prosecutors refused to comment on them. One of Amri’s brothers still in Tunisia, meanwhile, urged him to stop being a fugitive.

“I ask him to turn himself in to the police. If it is proved that he is involved, we dissociate ourselves from it,” brother Abdelkader Amri told The Associated Press.

He said Amri may have been radicalized in prison in Italy, where he went after leaving Tunisia in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.

Several locations across Germany were searched overnight, including a house in the Dortmund and a refugee home in Emmerich on the Dutch border, German media reported.

The manhunt also prompted police in Denmark to search a Sweden-bound ferry in the port of Grenaa after receiving tips that someone resembling Amri had been spotted, but police said they found nothing indicating his presence.