Islamic State Extremists Claim Deadly Berlin Truck Attack |

The Islamic State extremist group is claiming responsibility for the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people and left nearly 50 injured.

The Islamic State group's Amaq news agency said in a statement Tuesday that "the person who carried out the truck run over attack in Berlin is a soldier of the Islamic State and carried out the attack in response to calls for targeting citizens of the Crusader coalition."

German police are still hunting for the driver of the truck, which slammed into the downtown Christmas market Monday night.

Germany is not involved in anti-IS combat operations. But it does have Tornado jets and a refueling plane stationed in Turkey in support of the coalition fighting militants in Syria, as well as a frigate protecting a French aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean.

Meanwhile, German prosecutors say a man who was arrested after the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market has been released because there isn't enough evidence to tie him to the rampage.

They say the Pakistani citizen who came to Germany last year as an asylum-seeker denied involvement in the attack.

Witnesses were able to follow the truck's driver from the scene but lost track of him.

The man who was arrested matched witness descriptions of the truck driver, but investigators haven't been able to prove that he was in the truck's cab at the time of the attack.

And - Germany's top prosecutor says investigators are treating the Berlin Christmas market attack as an act of terrorism, though there is no claim of responsibility yet.

Peter Frank also told reporters Tuesday it's not entirely clear whether there was one perpetrator or more.

Frank says the method used in the rampage was reminiscent of July's truck attack in Nice, France and of the "modus operandi" used by Islamic extremist groups.