Visitors at a busy Christmas market in Berlin fell silent after a truck ploughed through crowds killing 12 people and injuring 48 people, a witness has said.
Jan Hollitzer, 36, said he heard screams as the vehicle made its way through the stalls, but that the market was “really silent” as “shocked” shoppers looked on at the aftermath.
Mr Hollitzer, deputy editor-in-chief of local news outlet Berliner Morgenpost, said he saw “more than one” person lying underneath the truck.
He was standing between 40 and 50 metres away from the Berlin City Weihnachtsmarkt at Breitschiedplatz when the incident happened.
He told the Press Association: “First, I heard a noise, then he destroyed the booths on the market and we heard some screams, and then the truck came out of the market on the left side.”
Mr Hollitzer said he walked across the street to the market and saw destroyed stalls, broken glass, crockery and tables, and injured people lying on the ground.
“I moved forward and saw the back of the truck – it was a lorry,” he said.
“There were some people under the truck and it was really scary, really terrifying.
“I moved on the street to see the front of the truck, which was destroyed.”
Mr Hollitzer, who lives in Berlin, said that it became “more noisy” as emergency services arrived at the scene and the initial shock of onlookers subsided.
Briton Emma Rushton, who was at the scene, said the market lights were torn down as the truck ploughed through.
She told the The New York Times that the vehicle had “completely decimated“ the hut in front of her, adding: “It happened so quickly that people wouldn’t have had an opportunity to get out of the way.
“People were sitting, holding their heads. There were pools of blood on the floor. There were people in the recovery position.
“And it was completely decimated – the wood, glass, everything everywhere.”
Mike Fox, from Birmingham, told The Associated Press that the truck had missed him by about three metres.
He said he had seen people trapped under stalls and others who appeared to have broken limbs.
“You do what you can to help who you can, really,” he said.
“It happened so fast that there was nothing we could do to stop it – if we’d tried to stop it we would have been crushed.”
Berlin Police said on Twitter on Tuesday morning that the incident was intentional and a suspected act of terrorism.
It is is the latest in a string of targeted attacks across Europe.
These include:
:: Police officials murdered
Islamic State (IS) inspired terrorist Larossi Abballa stabbed a police commander and his partner to death on June 13, in an attack streamed on Facebook Live.
Having tracked the couple for days, he killed Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, 42, a police commander in the Paris suburb of Les Mureaux, outside his home before going inside and taking Jessica Schneider and their three-year-old son hostage.
He killed the woman, who was a police administrator in the suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie, but did not harm the boy and was later arrested.
:: Paris
Co-ordinated suicide bombings and shootings at cafes, bars, a rock concert at the Bataclan theatre and the Stade de France stadium in the French capital left 130 people dead in the worst terrorist assault on Europe in a decade. Most of the Paris attackers died on the night of November 13 2015. Belgian extremist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, suspected of masterminding the deadly attacks in Paris, died along with his female cousin in a police raid in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis days later.
:: Train gunman thwarted
A man on board a Thalys high-speed train that had just crossed into France from Belgium tried to open fire with an AK-47 assault rifle but was overpowered by a Briton and three Americans, two of them off-duty members of the US armed forces.
IT expert Chris Norman, 62, was awarded the Legion d’Honneur – France’s top bravery award – for his intervention.
French police declared it an Islamic extremist attack, but the alleged gunman, Ayoub El Khazzani, maintained he wanted to commit a robbery.
French authorities have linked El Khazzani to Abaaoud, the ringleader of the Islamic State cell that attacked Paris last November and Brussels in March.
:: Beheading
Yassin Salhi, a truck driver with a history of radical Islamic ties dating back to 2003, decapitated his employer before driving to a US-owned gas plant on June 26 last year.
He was also accused of trying to cause an explosion by crashing his delivery truck into gas canisters at the Air Products warehouse, in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier near Lyon, and hanging his employer’s severed head on a factory gate.
Salhi was found dead in his Paris prison cell in December 2015. The authorities said Salhi, 35, had killed himself.
:: Charlie Hebdo
Gunmen stormed the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris on January 7 last year, killing 12 people.
The nation’s sense of panic was heightened as the assailants fled, and there was a subsequent attack on a kosher supermarket, with four others being killed. The incidents triggered worldwide outrage.
:: Brussels
In March this year Brussels, Belgium, was hit by suicide bombings at the airport and on the Metro which killed 32 victims and wounded 270. The attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group.
:: Tunisia
Many incidents focused on Europe but the June 2015 terror attack in Tunisia saw 30 Brits gunned down at a tourist resort in Sousse.
All the victims were killed by gunman Seifeddine Rezgui Yacoubi at the Riu Imperial Marhaba Hotel and the adjoining beach at the popular resort of Port El Kantaoui.
Just months earlier, in March 2015, 24 people were killed in a terror attack at Bardo National Museum in the capital, Tunis.