BERLIN: A German-Armenian man drove into a crowd in a busy shopping district in Berlin on Wednesday, mowing down a group of teenagers and killing their teacher before crashing through a shop window.

The incident happened at around 10.30am (0830 GMT) just across from Breitscheidplatz, where a sympathizer of the militant Islamic State group deliberately ploughed a truck into a Christmas market in 2016, killing 12.

Twelve people were injured on Wednesday, including six who remain in a life-threatening condition, emergency services said.

It was not clear whether the crash was intentional. The driver, 29, was being questioned by police.

The silver Renault Clio, with a Berlin licence plate, first mounted the sidewalk on the corner of Tauentzienstrasse and Rankestrasse, hitting the group of secondary school students on a class trip, before returning to the road.

It then rammed into the shop front on Marburger Strasse about 150 to 200 metres away.

A female teacher with the group from a school in Bad Arolsen, a small town in the central German state of Hesse, was killed. A male teacher was seriously injured, the Hesse state government said in a statement.

The driver was briefly detained by passers-by before being handed over to police after the car smashed through the shop front, according to police.

Berlin police chief Barbara Slowik said the driver was in hospital and “at this time, we do not have conclusive evidence of a political act”.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2022