The suspect in the Berlin Christmas market truck attack was killed in a pre-dawn shoot-out with police in a suburb of the northern Italian city of Milan on Friday, Italy's interior minister said, informs Reuters.

"The man killed was without a shadow of doubt Anis Amri," Marco Minniti said, referring to the 24-year-old Tunisian who is suspected of driving the truck that smashed through a Berlin market on Monday killing 12 people.

Minniti told reporters that Amri was stopped by two policemen at around 3 a.m. (2200 EDT) in front of the Sesto San Giovanni train station, north of Milan.

When he was asked for his identification papers, Amri pulled a gun and shot one of the two policemen, lightly wounding him in the shoulder. He in turn was then shot dead by the police.

A judicial source told Reuters that police had a tip off that Amri might be in the Milan area and that additional patrols had been sent out to look for him.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Berlin attack, in which the truck mowed through a crowd of people and bulldozed wooden huts selling Christmas gifts and snacks beside a famous church in west Berlin.

Source: Reuters