One person is dead and at least 30 others are injured after a vehicle drove into a crowd near a church in western Berlin, authorities say.

The vehicle struck people outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church about 10.30am local time on Wednesday morning, a spokesperson for the Berlin Fire Brigade said.

Berlin police said officers had detained a man believed responsible.

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“A man is believed to have driven into a group of people. It is not yet known whether it was an accident or a deliberate act,” police said, adding that he was being held at the scene.

The incident took place on Rankestrasse near the main shopping district’s Breitscheidplatz, the scene of Berlin’s 2016 Christmas market attack in which 11 people were killed.

Anis Amri, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker with Islamist links, hijacked a truck, killed the driver and then ploughed the vehicle into the crowd.

- with CNN