Berlin police said that the Christmas market had been evacuated because of two men who were behaving suspiciousl, DW reported.

"They said no arrests had been made, contradicting several newspaper reports, and also that no suspicious objects had been found," the source noted. "A police spokeswoman also said that the suspicion that there was an arrest warrant for the arrest of one of the men had turned out to be unfounded and was the result of a similarity of names."

The first major terrorist attack in Germany was in December 2016. A truck driven by Tunisian citizen Anis Amri crashed into a crowd of people at a Christmas market in central Berlin. As a result of the attack, 12 people were killed, about 50 were injured. The first victim was a Polish driver whom a terrorist killed while hijacking a truck. Amri was later killed in Milan during a shootout with police.

After the attack, relatives of the victims criticized the German authorities, pointing to the insufficiently tactful attitude of official Berlin. They would like the authorities to address them with a symbolic gesture, for example, with a “personal letter of condolences” from German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In March 2018, the German government opened a focal point for relatives of those killed in the attacks.