Berlin Terror Suspect Killed in Shootout With Police in Italy

The suspect in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack was killed in a pre-dawn shoot-out with police in a suburb of the northern Italian city of Milan on Friday, Italy's interior minister said.

"The man killed was without a shadow of doubt Anis Amri," Marco Minniti said, referring to the 24-year-old Tunisian who is suspected of driving the truck that smashed through a Berlin market on Monday killing 12 people.

Minniti told reporters that Amri was stopped by two policemen at around 3 a.m. (2200 EDT) in front of the Sesto San Giovanni train station, north of Milan.

When he was asked for his identification papers, Amri pulled a gun and shot one of the two policemen, lightly wounding him in the shoulder. He in turn was then shot dead by the police.

"These two extraordinary, extremely young men, simply by doing their duty, have done an extraordinary service to our community," Minniti said. One of the two policemen had only just started service and was on his trial period.

A judicial source told Reuters that police had a tip off that Amri might be in the Milan area and that additional patrols had been sent out to look for him.

A rail ticket found on Amri's body indicated he had traveled by high speed train from France to the northern Italian city of Turin, the source said. Amri then caught a regional train to the Milan suburbs.

Minniti gave very few details of the police operation, saying investigations were still in progress. He added that there could be "future developments".

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Berlin attack, in which the truck mowed through a crowd of people and bulldozed wooden huts selling Christmas gifts and snacks beside a famous church in west Berlin.

Amri entered Italy in February 2011 without any ID and claimed to be a 17-year-old minor, a spokesman for the Italian state police, Mario Viola, told CNN earlier this week.

While in Italy, he served four years in prison after he was involved in an arson attack on a school, his father told Tunisian radio.

Viola said that Amri's jail term for damaging state property, assault and arson at the Lampedusa refugee center began in late 2011. He was released in May 2015.

Italian authorities ordered his deportation, but Tunisian authorities wouldn't accept the request on the grounds of a lack of proper documentation, Viola said.

At that point, Italian authorities told Amri to leave the country, and officials lost track of him.