On 19 December 2016, a truck was deliberately driven into the Christmas market next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, leaving 12 people dead and 56 others injured. One of the victims was the truck's original driver, Łukasz Urban, who was shot dead hours before the attack. The truck was eventually stopped by its automatic brakes. The perpetrator was 24-year-old Anis Amri, an unsuccessful asylum seeker from Tunisia. Four days after the attack, he was killed in a shootout with police near Milan in Italy. An initial suspect was arrested and later released due to lack of evidence. Nearly five years after the attack, a man who was critically injured during the attack died from complications related to his wounds, becoming the 13th victim. The attack is the deadliest act of terror in Germany since the 1980 Oktoberfest bombing in Munich, which killed 13 people and injured 211 others, and as of December 2023, it remains the worst Islamist terrorist attack by number of casualties in German history.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed responsibility for the attack and released a video of the perpetrator, Anis Amri, pledging allegiance to the terror group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The Berlin attack took place during a time of heightened Islamist terrorist activity in Europe. Several terrorist attacks in 2016, in Germany and in neighboring countries, have been linked to ISIS; some of them were similar to the truck attack on the Christmas market in Berlin (e.g. the 2014 Nantes attack and the 2016 Nice truck attack, both in France).

The vehicle involved, a black Scania R 450 semi-trailer truck, bore Polish number plates and belonged to a Polish delivery company, Usługi Transportowe (Transport Services) Ariel Żurawski, based in Sobiemyśl. The truck was on its return leg to Poland, having started its trip in Turin, Italy, and was transporting steel beams to a Berlin warehouse owned by ThyssenKrupp.

The head of the delivery company, Ariel Żurawski, reported that his cousin, Łukasz Robert Urban, had been driving the truck to Berlin, but that he could not imagine him being responsible for the attack. Żurawski's company last contacted Urban between 15:00 and 16:00, when Urban reported that he had arrived at the Berlin warehouse a day early and had to wait there overnight to unload his truck the following morning. The last photo of Urban still alive was taken at a kebab shop near the ThyssenKrupp warehouse at about 14:00.

The family had been unable to contact Urban since 16:00. Żurawski suspected that the truck had been hijacked based on its GPS coordinates, as well as indications that it was being driven erratically. Żurawski later identified the victim found in the truck as his cousin Urban, the original driver of the semi-trailer; Urban was killed by the perpetrator of the attack. According to a post-mortem examination cited by the German media, Urban was shot in the head between 16:30 and 17:30; initial reports stated that Urban had also been stabbed, but this was revised following the autopsy.

On 19 December 2016, at 20:10 local time, the perpetrator drove the stolen truck through a Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in the City West of Berlin, killing 11 people and injuring 56. The truck came from the direction of Hardenbergstraße, drove about 50 metres (160 ft) through the market, and destroyed several stalls before turning back onto Budapester Straße and coming to a stop level with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

Several witnesses saw the driver leave the truck and flee towards Tiergarten. One witness ran after him.