![]() The incident is the deadliest terrorist attack in Germany since an attack at Oktoberfest in Munich in 1980, which killed 13 people and injured 211 others. On 19 December 2016, at 20:02 local time, the perpetrator drove the stolen truck through a Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in the City West of Berlin, killing 11 people and injuring 56. According to a post-mortem examination cited by the German media, Urban was shot in the head between 16:30 and 17:30. Żurawski later identified the victim found in the truck as his cousin Urban, the original driver of the semi-trailer Urban was killed by the perpetrator of the attack. Żurawski suspected that the truck had been hijacked based on its GPS coordinates, as well as indications that the truck was being driven erratically. The family had been unable to contact Urban since 16:00. The last photo of Urban still alive was taken at a kebab shop near the ThyssenKrupp warehouse at about 14:00. Żurawski's company last contacted Urban between 15:00 and 16:00, when Urban reported that he had arrived a day early to the Berlin warehouse and that he had to wait there overnight to unload his truck the following morning. The head of the delivery company, Ariel Żurawski, reported that his cousin Łukasz Robert Urban had been driving the truck to Berlin, but that he could not imagine him being responsible for the attack. Going back to at least 2000, a Frankfurt-based Al-Qaeda plot to bomb the Strasbourg Christmas market was foiled by law enforcement. This was in view of the threat from ISIL, Al-Qaeda and affiliated groups, including self-radicalized extremists. On 21 November, the United States Department of State warned that Americans "should exercise caution at holiday festivals, events, and outdoor markets" throughout Europe. On 26 November a 12-year-old Iraqi-German boy planted a nail bomb at a Christmas market in Ludwigshafen, but it failed to detonate. Two days later Islamists attacked Christians attending a church service in Normandy, killing an elderly priest. On 24 July, a Syrian refugee blew himself up outside a music festival in the German city of Ansbach, wounding fifteen people. Four days later, an Afghan asylum seeker stabbed five people on a train near Würzburg, Germany. ![]() On 14 July, a Tunisian man deliberately drove a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice, killing 86 people. In March, 32 people were killed by three coordinated suicide bombings in the Belgian capital Brussels. the 2014 Nantes attack and the 2016 Nice truck attack). Several terrorist attacks in 2016, in Germany and in neighboring countries, have been linked to ISIS some of them were similar to the truck attack on the Christmas market in Berlin (e.g. The Berlin attack took place during a time of heightened Islamist terrorist activity in Europe. ![]()
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