TEL AVIV – With German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirming Monday’s deadly Berlin Christmas market massacre was a terrorist attack, Europe has once again been rocked by an assailant who seems to have taken a page out of the Palestinian jihadist playbook of vehicular terrorism.
Here are some details of the attack, as per the New York Times:
In the attack, a heavy truck jumped a sidewalk around 8 p.m. and plowed into the market near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, a symbolic Berlin site whose spire, jagged from bomb damage, was intentionally left unrepaired after World War II.
The police said they later arrested a man near the scene who was suspected of driving the truck into the crowd.
The German newspaper Die Welt reported, citing police sources that it did not identify, that the suspect in custody was a 23-year-old migrant from Pakistan who was known to the police. The newspaper said he arrived in Germany in February from the Balkans.
The incident mirrors an attack in Nice, France last July in which a 31-year-old Tunisian national ploughed a cargo truck into crowds of civilians celebrating Bastille Day, killing 85 people and injuring 434. The Daily Mail reported a “huge cache of guns, grenades and ‘larger weapons’ were later found inside the lorry.” The newspaper cited witnesses saying after plowing through the crowd in Nice, the gunman jumped out of the truck and opened fire before being shot dead near the scene.
For several years now, Palestinian terrorists have deployed the same deadly tactic of plowing vehicles into pedestrians and then attempting to continue their assaults with stabbings or shootings.
Just last week, a Palestinian woman attempted a car-ramming attack against Israeli security forces at a West Bank checkpoint.
In October, three Israeli officers were wounded when a Palestinian driver plowed his car into them and was shot dead.
As I reported after the Bastille Day jihad attack:
Such vehicular attacks and attempted attacks have become almost a routine throughout the most recent so-called Palestinian wave of terror targeting Israelis for over a year now.
Moreover, Palestinians have been utilizing the bloody tactic for at least eight years, with assailants at times using heavy vehicles such as tractors.
One attack that mirrors Thursday’s carnage in Nice was a December 2015 car-ramming in which a Palestinian plowed his vehicle into a large group of people at the entrance to Jerusalem, wounding fourteen, including an infant. The terrorist, in that case, was shot and killed and an axe was discovered in his car, meaning he likely intended to exit the vehicle and continue his onslaught.
As far back as July 2008, a Palestinian terrorist driving a large construction vehicle plowed into cars and pedestrians in central Jerusalem, killing three people and wounding more than 40.
Three weeks later, a Palestinian tractor driver rammed into an Israeli public bus and five cars, wounding 15 people.
Two months later, a Palestinian from eastern Jerusalem deliberately drove his BMW into a crowd in Jerusalem near the Old City, wounding 17.
In August 2014, a Palestinian drove a tractor into a bus in central Jerusalem, wounding six victims.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
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