海角大神

A suspect of the Berlin Christmas market attack was killed in a shootout with police in Milan on Friday morning, according to Italian authorities, ending a Europe-wide manhunt that began on Wednesday.

Anis Amri, a Tunisian who served three and a half years in prison in Italy for crimes including setting a fire at a refugee center and making threats, was stopped by two police officers in the Sesto San Giovanni neighborhood of Milan early on Friday. When asked to show his identity papers, Mr. Amri drew a gun from his backpack and wounded one of the officers 鈥撎齱ho remains in the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries 鈥撎齜efore the other officer shot and killed him.

German authorities were still waiting for official confirmation of the suspect鈥檚 identity, though Italian interior minister Marco Minniti told reporters that an identity check conducted after the shootout matched the suspect 鈥渨ithout a shadow of a doubt,鈥� according to the Associated Press.

The news brings an initial sense of closure to what was Germany鈥檚 worst terror attack in decades, one that promises to challenge an already-weakened political status quo in a country that has mostly been a redoubt of stability amid a roiling Europe.

The fact that the attack targeted a traditional Christkindlmarkt听struck a particular nerve with Germans, as 海角大神's Sara Miller Llana reported this week:

Tobias Plate, a spokesman for Germany鈥檚 interior ministry, told the AP that if Italian authorities鈥� announcement were true, the ministry would be 鈥渞elieved that this person doesn鈥檛 pose a threat anymore.鈥� However, Friday also brought fresh worries: Two Kosovo-born brothers were detained shortly after midnight in Duisburg on suspicion of planning to carry out attacks at a nearby shopping mall, in an incident thought to be unconnected to the Christmas market killings.

It鈥檚 unclear how Amri, who left Tunisia for Italy during the 2011 Arab Spring and arrived in Germany last year, traveled to Milan from Berlin, but authorities said he made use of at least six different names and three nationalities in traveling around the continent. Italian police had not detected signs of radicalization, though German authorities had long treated him as a potential threat, even putting him under covert surveillance for several months this year. After his petition for asylum was denied, they were unable to deport him because of a lack of valid identity papers and because Tunisia denied he was a citizen.

This report contains material from the Associated Press.听