MILAN — The Tunisian man suspected in a deadly attack on a Christmas market in Berlin was killed early Friday in a shootout with police in Milan during a routine patrol outside a train station, ending a Europe-wide manhunt.
Italian police said Anis Amri traveled from Germany through France and into Italy after Monday night's truck attack in Berlin, at least some of it by train. French officials refused to comment on his passage through France, which has increased surveillance on trains after both recent French attacks and the one in Germany.
Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni praised the two young police officers for their courage in taking down Amri during a routine check of ID papers while he was alone outside the deserted station. But he also called for greater cross-border police cooperation, suggesting some dismay that Europe's open border policy had enabled Amri to move around easily despite being its No. 1 fugitive.
Amri, who shot one of the police officers in the shoulder, was identified with the help of fingerprints supplied by Germany.
"The person killed, without a shadow of a doubt, is Anis Amri, the suspect of the Berlin terrorist attack," said Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack outside Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in which a truck plowed into a Christmas market, killing 12 people and injuring 56 others. It also noted his death in Milan and released a video online showing him pledging allegiance to the militant group.
Amri has been linked to an extremist recruitment network allegedly run by Ahmad Abdulaziz Abdullah A., also known as Abu Walaa, a Germany-based preacher who was arrested last month, said Holger Muench, the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she has ordered a comprehensive investigation into all angles of the case after it emerged that German authorities had tracked Amri for months on suspicion of planning an attack.
"We can be relieved at the end of this week that one acute danger has been ended," she said in Berlin. "But the danger of terrorism as a whole remains, as it has for many years — we all know that."
Milan, Rome and other cities have been on heightened alert, with increased surveillance and police patrols. Italian officials stressed that the young officers who stopped Amri didn't suspect he was the Berlin attacker, but rather grew suspicious because he was a North African man, alone outside a deserted train station at 3 a.m.
Amri, 24, who had spent time in prison in Italy, was stopped by two officers during a routine patrol in the Sesto San Giovanni neighborhood of Milan early Friday. He pulled a gun from his backpack after being asked to show his identification and was killed in an ensuing shootout.
One of the officers, Christian Movio, 35, was shot in the right shoulder and had surgery for what doctors said was a superficial wound. Movio's 29-year-old partner, Luca Scata, fatally shot Amri in the chest.
He had no ID, no phone and only a pocket knife on him, as well as the loaded 22-caliber pistol he used to shoot Movio, police said.
"He was a ghost," Milan police chief Antoio de Iesu said, adding that he was stopped because of basic police work, intensified surveillance "and a little luck."
Read Saturday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.