Merkel says full force of German law to bear in Berlin attacks

[BERLIN] Chancellor Angela Merkel said that German authorities were working on the assumption that the deaths of 12 people after a truck rammed a Berlin Christmas market were a terrorist attack, and pledged that the full force of the law will be deployed to clarify "every detail".

In a nationally televised statement in Berlin, Ms Merkel said people across Germany were mourning after the "horrific and unimaginable" deaths and injuries sustained in the capital on Monday evening.

"This is a very difficult day," Ms Merkel said.

"Like millions of people in Germany, I am horrified, shocked and deeply saddened by what happened yesterday evening on Berlin's Breidscheidplatz."

Ms Merkel, in her first public comments on the attack, said that there remains much "that we don't know yet with the required certainty".

"But based on current evidence we need to assume that this was a terrorist attack," she said.

The investigation will turn up "every detail - and we will prosecute as thoroughly as the law allows".

BLOOMBERG