1 dead, 5 seriously hurt after car smashes into crowd on Berlin shopping street

A car drove into a crowd of people in Berlin on Wednesday, killing one person and leaving 5 with life-threatening injuries, a fire service spokesperson said, in a district of the German capital popular with tourists and shoppers.

More than a dozen people were injured, a police spokesperson at the scene in western Berlin said, next to the war-ravaged Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, one of German capital’s best-known landmarks.

“A man is believed to have driven into a group of people. It is not yet known whether it was an accident or a deliberate act,” police said, adding that bystanders had detained him at the scene before handing him over to authorities.

“We are currently on the scene with about 130 emergency personnel,” the police added. “The vehicle, a small car, was secured on site.”

Investigators were looking into whether the incident was a deliberate attack or possibly an accident with a medical cause, a police spokesperson said.

Police were investigating all possibilities, the spokesperson said, adding that the driver had received some medical treatment.

Blankets covered what appeared to be a body in a cordoned-off area guarded by police, Reuters images showed. A small, silver coloured Renault car was lodged inside a shop after smashing through a plate glass window.

Rescue workers moved apparently conscious people on stretchers towards an ambulance, including one woman sitting up, and another who covered her face with her hand.

John Barrowman, an actor who was at the scene, told Sky News in the UK: “I saw a woman being put into an ambulance ... it looked like they were resuscitating somebody.”

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The site, on a shopping street near a McDonald’s restaurant, was cordoned off. Bystanders looked up at a helicopter circling above.

The incident took place near the scene of a fatal attack on Dec 19, 2016, when Anis Amri, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker with Islamist links, hijacked a truck, killed the driver and then ploughed it into a crowded western Berlin Christmas market, killing 11 more people and injuring dozens of others.

Amri then fled to Italy, where Italian police shot him dead. REUTERS