Download the Full Report
January 2017 The December 2016 Berlin Vehicular Ramming 1 Attack: An Analysis The Attack On Monday evening, December 19, 2016, at 20:02, Anis Amri, a 24-years old Tunisian who had previously pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS), drove a semi-truck with a trailer into the Breitscheid Christmas Market, located next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in the heart of Berlin.2 Amri steered the truck from Kantstrasse into the entrance of the Christmas market, plowing through visitors across a path between market stalls for about 60-80 meters before breaking through a row of stalls and coming to a stop on Budapesterstrasse, at the foot of the Memorial Church.3 Apparently, the truck was stopped by its automatic breaking system after it detected an impact.4 In total, 11 people were killed, and 45 wounded (30 of them seriously) in the attack.5 In addition, the original truck 1 Authors: Lt. Col. (Res.) Uri Ben Yaakov, Ms. Arava Lev, Mr. Michel D. Wyss 2 Thomas Joscelyn, "Berlin truck terrorist pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in video," Long War Journal, December 23, 2016, accessed January 16, 2017, http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2016/12/berlin-truck-terrorist-pledged-allegiance-to-abu-bakr-al- baghdadi-in-video.php ; Kai Biermann et al., "Was wir über den Anschlag in Berlin wissen," Zeit Online, December 29, 2016, accessed January 16, 2017, http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2016- 12/berlin-breitscheidplatz-gedaechtniskirche-weihnachtsmarkt#english-version. 3 Kai Biermann et al., "Was wir über den Anschlag in Berlin wissen," Zeit Online, December 29, 2016, accessed January 16, 2017, http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2016-12/berlin-breitscheidplatz- gedaechtniskirche-weihnachtsmarkt#english-version.
[Show full text]