Germany says the Berlin Pride attack is believed to be an act of Islamic extremists – National
German investigators on Sunday were hunting a man who allegedly drove a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride festival, killing one person and injuring several others, before stabbing others with a machete in what authorities believe was an Islamic terror attack.
Authorities issued a wanted notice and warned people against approaching Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, saying he may be armed and dangerous.
“Everything we see here indicates that we have faced an attack by Islamic terrorists,” said Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt.
Dobrindt put the number of injured at 29.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called the attack “horrible.”
“The attack on the Christopher Street Day festival in Berlin is horrific,” Carney wrote on the X blog. “No one should have to face hate or violence because of who they are or who they love. My thoughts are with the victims, their loved ones, and the 2SLGBTQIA+ community in Berlin and around the world.”
Ashley Jump, a 26-year-old UK citizen, was in Berlin for a Pride event on Saturday but left the celebrations before the attack. They returned on Sunday to lay flowers at a memorial near the crime scene in support of the LGBTQ+ community.
“They will never turn us off, we will never leave,” they said. “Since time immemorial humanity has existed, and as long as humanity exists, we will exist. We will not be removed.”
The suspect is suspected of having ties to Islamic extremism
Dobrindt said the suspect had previously come to the attention of the authorities because of several previous crimes, which he did not provide details of, and because of “sedition and being part of an Islamist incident” in the German capital.
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He said Ballout was born in Germany, and that his mother was born in 2002 – three years before he was born.
Dobrindt said the suspect had previously been convicted in Berlin, although he did not specify why. He said he was given a suspended sentence of one year and ten months.
The police had an operation in the city while searching for the suspect. This included a search of an apartment in Berlin’s Schöneberg district early on Sunday, but police said they found no one there.
Berlin’s Pride festival is one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ festivals
According to the police, a white van entered the Tiergarten park around 10:00 and hit several people before colliding with a tree. The closing party of the Pride festival, known as Christopher Street Day, was going on at the time near the Brandenburg Gate, a short distance away. The party followed a parade of about 80 trucks that had passed through downtown Berlin earlier in the day.
The attack did not take place at the festival, on its way or at the closing ceremony. Instead, the violence took place a few hundred meters (yards) away from the trail in Tiergarten park. The van drove into a crowd that was probably a mix of festival goers and other locals or tourists.
Police said a woman was killed. The fire department in Berlin said that three people were injured in the accident and eight others were seriously injured.
The Pride event near the Brandenburg Gate was canceled around 10:15 pm and the band’s performance on stage was interrupted. People have been urged to go home and avoid taking the route through the park.
Hundreds of thousands of people came to Berlin to celebrate on Saturday, although it was not clear how many were at the party late at night. It is one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ festivals.
The van, which had been smashed into a tree, was still visible at the scene on Sunday morning.
“We are just amazed at what happened,” said Andre Lehmann, chief executive of the national LGBTQ+ organization, LSVD+. “This suspicious attack touches the hearts of the local community.”
Amsterdam says it will celebrate independence after Berlin attack
Chancellor Friedrich Merz described what happened as “an attack on our society.” He added in a post on X that Germany loves freedom, “and we will keep and protect that.”
Dobrindt said he expects security measures at other major events in Germany, including Pride events elsewhere, to be reviewed and if necessary tightened.
He expressed concern about possible copycat crimes, adding that “this is not normal in such cases, but it is also inevitable.”
Berlin has seen Islamist attacks before. In December 2016, a rejected asylum seeker from Tunisia plowed into a hijacked truck at a Christmas market, killing 13 people and injuring dozens. He was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
In February last year, a Spanish tourist was stabbed and seriously injured at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. A Syrian man was convicted in March and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Saturday’s violence is “allegedly an attack by Islamic terrorists on our way of living together, on our free democracy, on our openness and on our freedom,” Wegner said.
In the neighboring country of the Netherlands, Amsterdam is hosting World Pride this week and next with its annual Pride celebrations. Mayor Femke Halsema said authorities and organizers are “closely monitoring the security situation” after the Berlin attack but intend to prevent any other measures that disrupt the celebration of freedom and love.
–Associated Press reporters Kirsten Grieshaber, Fanny Brodersen, Pietro De Cristofaro and Stefanie Dazio in Berlin, and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
