Manhunt on across Europe

A manhunt is under way across Europe's Schengen states after prosecutors yesterday identified a suspect in the lorry attack on a Berlin Christmas market.

Police are looking for a Tunisian man after finding an identity document under the driver's seat of the truck that ploughed into the market, killing 12 people, on Monday evening, security sources said.

The document was in the name of Anis A, born in the southern city of Tataouine in 1992, the sources said, using a convention whereby suspects are identified by their first name and initial. The man was also believed to use false names, reports Reuters.

He may have been injured in a struggle with the driver of the truck.

A spokesperson for Tunisia's foreign ministry said it was trying to verify the information. Daily newspaper Bild reported the man was known to police as a possibly dangerous individual, and part of a large Islamist network.

"There is a new suspect we are searching for -- he is a suspect but not necessarily the assailant," German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters.

He declined to immediately confirm numerous media reports that the suspect was a Tunisian asylum seeker with links to the Islamic extremist scene, reports AFP.

However a conservative lawmaker at the same news conference, Stephan Meyer, said the suspect was in fact from Tunisia and being watched by police.

Members of the New York Police Department's Counterterrorism Bureau stand watch at the Union Square Holiday market in Manhattan, New York City, US, on Tuesday following the Berlin Christmas market attacks. Cities around the US bolstered security around holiday events following the attack in Berlin. Photo: Reuters

"We are apparently talking about a potentially dangerous suspect who was known to authorities and belonged to the Salafist-Islamist scene," he told reporters after a meeting of parliament's interior affairs committee.

Some 150 police officers are said to be involved in searches in the Emmerich area of North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany, where the suspect's permit was issued.

Ralf Jaeger, interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, said the Tunisian man had already been under investigation for planning an attack.

Counter-terrorism officials had exchanged information about him, most recently in November, and a probe had been launched suspecting he was preparing "a serious act of violence against the state," he said.