BERLIN – German authorities are investigating a series of apparently deliberate car crashes on a Berlin motorway on Tuesday evening as an Islamist attack, media reported on Wednesday.

"According to the current knowledge, it was an Islamist-motivated attack," a spokesperson for the prosecutors' office was quoted as saying by Focus magazine. He added that there were also indications that the 30-year-old suspect with Iraqi citizenship had psychological problems.

The Berlin-based Tagesspiegel newspaper cited a spokesperson for the prosecutors as saying the sequence of events and the current results of the investigation suggested it could have been an attack.

Shouts of the suspect at the scene suggested that his actions could have been Islamist-motivated, it added.

A spokesperson for the Berlin public prosecutors was not available for comment.

Police arrested the suspect at the scene, after a device in his car which the man said was dangerous, turned out to be a toolbox.

The apparently deliberate car crashes left six people wounded, three of them seriously, the fire department said.

Did you know you can comment on this article? Subscribe to News24 and add your voice to the conversation.