:00:00. > :00:00.that, because there is traffic. OK, the police are now calling it a
:00:00. > :00:00.terror attack in Berlin. Thank you for joining us.
:00:07. > :00:11.Let's look at some of the front pages. Many of them lead on the
:00:12. > :00:18.events over the last 2-3 hours from Berlin. Natalie Haynes and Rob
:00:19. > :00:24.Merrick join me. We will start with the Guardian, which has on the front
:00:25. > :00:29.page nine dead in Berlin, truck horror, dozens hurt at Christmas
:00:30. > :00:31.market. Natalie, you were telling me earlier that your family from
:00:32. > :00:37.Belgium. That's true. The whole Christmas
:00:38. > :00:41.market thing is something that you know a lot about, like a lot of
:00:42. > :00:45.people do, I suppose, in this country. They go over to Europe and
:00:46. > :00:49.go to the markets, but you were telling me earlier that they do have
:00:50. > :00:53.barriers around some of the markets. They did last year, I haven't been
:00:54. > :00:58.over this year yet and I am running out of time, but at the start of
:00:59. > :01:02.this year, when the Christmas markets run into the earlier part of
:01:03. > :01:13.January, that is when I was last over. They have big concrete blocks
:01:14. > :01:15.in the centre of Brugge. It is a very beautiful town centre, and you
:01:16. > :01:21.are not allowed to drive through anyway, but they have put up big
:01:22. > :01:25.concrete blocks. Is that a safety measure? I've to say my cousins, who
:01:26. > :01:31.are young and fearless, were scoffing at the idea that anybody
:01:32. > :01:41.would be fearful of such things in Bruges. I thought, OK, you are young
:01:42. > :01:45.and brave, but it seemed a measure. Perhaps serving a dual function.
:01:46. > :01:50.You can't get a softer target than a Christmas market, can you?
:01:51. > :01:54.Clearly, the eyewitness Emma felt that it was unpredictable, how can
:01:55. > :02:00.you protect against it but perhaps the only we can is with barriers
:02:01. > :02:06.that Natalie was talking about. But your gut feeling is that if they did
:02:07. > :02:09.attack, they would attack somewhere else. It is almost impossible to
:02:10. > :02:14.prevent some sort of attack somewhere.
:02:15. > :02:17.The Guardian reporting that one man is arrested and another man is dead
:02:18. > :02:28.in the Laurie. This was not an accident. -- lorry. Emma saying that
:02:29. > :02:32.there was no way that it could have been accidental, it was travelling
:02:33. > :02:35.in a straight line, it was not veering off in any way, suggesting
:02:36. > :02:40.that the driver had suffered a heart attack or something like that. It
:02:41. > :02:45.was clear to them what was going on. It is hard not to join the dots,
:02:46. > :02:51.because it feels so much like the story of Nice in July, when
:02:52. > :02:57.similarly, for Bastille Day, a truck ploughed into a huge crowd of
:02:58. > :03:02.families. Exactly the same, a soft target. Chris is market attract
:03:03. > :03:06.people with children, so it is difficult not to fill in the gaps
:03:07. > :03:11.and say that it is clearly what it is -- Christmas markets attract. We
:03:12. > :03:14.will have to see what develops and what information the police release
:03:15. > :03:21.over the next few hours, or days and weeks. At the moment, you think back
:03:22. > :03:26.to whenever the Glasgow bin lorry case was and we did the same thing,
:03:27. > :03:29.and of course it was a different story, equally tragic, but
:03:30. > :03:37.differently so. A quote on the front of the
:03:38. > :03:45.Guardian, there seems to be no doubt about what has happened, he says,"
:03:46. > :03:49.if you days before Christmas, the message is clear, no matter how, we
:03:50. > :04:01.can pounce at any time". That seems to be the thing.
:04:02. > :04:10.The front page of the i, Islamic State on the back foot in Syria, and
:04:11. > :04:16.in Iraq. Many analysts point out that this is how they are now
:04:17. > :04:19.getting their message out, I suppose, their message of terror.
:04:20. > :04:28.They have been appealing to their followers abroad to do what they can
:04:29. > :04:31.to further their twisted cars. Natalie, Islamic State also saying
:04:32. > :04:37.that trucks are a good thing to use to attack people. While the
:04:38. > :04:43.authorities in Germany are keeping a bit of an open mind on this, clearly
:04:44. > :04:46.with that calling from Islamic State with this happening, with the Nice
:04:47. > :04:50.attack as well, many point their fingers towards some kind of
:04:51. > :04:55.Islamist link. I suppose it is one of those things
:04:56. > :05:00.where we have watched the encroachment of more and more
:05:01. > :05:05.things. Once you could say about unattended baggage, that is
:05:06. > :05:11.something to be afraid of. Now you can see someone with a bag, it does
:05:12. > :05:15.not have to be unattended. There are bag searches to make people feel
:05:16. > :05:21.safer. And it isn't particularly difficult to get hold of a lorry. It
:05:22. > :05:25.isn't difficult to have a license to drive a heavy goods vehicle, it
:05:26. > :05:37.isn't particularly difficult to force somebody else with a licence
:05:38. > :05:40.to let you have the lorry. The question arises, we can't keep
:05:41. > :05:43.fighting the weapon because the weapons ciggy changes. The question
:05:44. > :05:54.is then the target. In that case, what do we do? Do we never go to
:05:55. > :06:01.places? Do we carry on doing what we wanted to do for the rest of the
:06:02. > :06:10.weekend, it is super brave. On the front of the FT, echoes of
:06:11. > :06:13.Nice at a seasonal market. I covered the Nice attack, and there were
:06:14. > :06:20.Brits flying in the day afterwards in solidarity. They specifically
:06:21. > :06:26.said, we're not going to be deterred by this, as Emma was saying earlier,
:06:27. > :06:30.we will not let them win, people flying in specifically the day after
:06:31. > :06:35.to show solidarity. When this happened, everyone's minds, my mind
:06:36. > :06:55.certainly, went that it is Nice again.
:06:56. > :07:00.In the 2005 suicide attacks, you carry on, I certainly did. The
:07:01. > :07:05.conclusion of the French authorities was that the man that carried out
:07:06. > :07:08.the massacre in Nice had been inspired by Islamist propaganda, but
:07:09. > :07:12.they couldn't find any suggestion that Isis had orchestrated the
:07:13. > :07:18.attack. What can be said is that at some point Isis will claim ASBOs
:07:19. > :07:19.ability for Berlin, but they did not necessarily orchestrated, merely
:07:20. > :07:32.that they inspired. In the wake of Nice, the authorities
:07:33. > :07:37.were trying to establish how easy it would be for someone to be able to
:07:38. > :07:44.get their hands on a vehicle large enough to cause maximum damage.
:07:45. > :07:51.Interestingly, the suggestion is that there are some reports say that
:07:52. > :07:58.it was a vehicle that was hijacked. The Guardian is running a live
:07:59. > :08:01.update, a live feed, and Kate Connelly, one of their reporters,
:08:02. > :08:07.had quoted, I think, the owner of the company who owns the truck which
:08:08. > :08:13.is Polish, I think. The quote she had was from the company owner
:08:14. > :08:27.saying that it was his cousin who was in the Laurie and he was certain
:08:28. > :08:32.that he would put his hand in the fire -- in the lorry. It may be
:08:33. > :08:37.incorrect, but it is something that makes perfect sense in this
:08:38. > :08:41.narrative, do we rushed to believe it or ask the right questions?
:08:42. > :08:44.Wouldn't suggest it was true, I would merely say that question has
:08:45. > :08:48.been raised. An attack on a mosque in zero today,
:08:49. > :08:56.also the assassination of the Rossen ambassador to Turkey. -- in zero.
:08:57. > :09:06.Conspiracy theorists might suggest they are linked -- in Zurich.
:09:07. > :09:11.What a dreadful day in terms of terror and Europe this day has been.
:09:12. > :09:15.The suspicion must be that if you are going to carry out an attack
:09:16. > :09:21.like this, there was one in is a wreck as well, the run-up Christmas
:09:22. > :09:27.is a time when people are expecting to be out and about, enjoying
:09:28. > :09:33.themselves, at a Christmas market or another event. That is the time when
:09:34. > :09:40.your motivation is to create terror to the maximum, maybe there is a
:09:41. > :09:46.link with Zurich. There have been previous terror attacks in Germany
:09:47. > :09:51.in recent weeks and months, but not since the summer, but it is now
:09:52. > :09:57.three and six months. Rob and Natalie will be back in 15
:09:58. > :10:02.minutes time. This is pretty much the only story that most of the
:10:03. > :10:06.papers are running on. Thank you for that. Stay with us much more coming
:10:07. > :10:08.up. Now it is time for the weather.