BERLIN (AP) — A van ramming and stabbing near Berlin’s Pride festival that left one person dead and many others injured is believed to have been an Islamic extremist terror attack, Germany’s interior minister said Sunday.
The suspect in Saturday night’s attack remains at large. Authorities issued a wanted notice and warned people against approaching Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, saying that he may be armed and dangerous.
Authorities
said he is believed to have injured several people with a van in a park near the Pride festival’s closing party. Several people were also apparently stabbed.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the suspect is believed to have injured people with a machete.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
BERLIN (AP) — German authorities on Sunday issued a wanted notice for a fugitive suspect in the van ramming near Berlin’s Pride festival that left one person dead and injured at least 16 others.
Police and prosecutors asked for help in finding the 21-year-old suspect, whom they identified as Abdul B. They said he is believed to have injured several people with a moving vehicle late Saturday evening, and that one or more people apparently then left that vehicle. Several people were also apparently stabbed, they added.
Sunday’s notice warned the public to avoid “direct contact” with the suspect, saying that he may be armed and dangerous.
Police had said earlier that they had identified a suspect who has ties to Islamic groups in the German capital.
“The suspect is known to police. He is known to us as a member of Islamic circles here in Berlin, and our search for this person is proceeding at full speed,” police spokesperson Florian Nath said.
Nath added that investigators had no information on “his specific motives.”
Police conducted operations in the city as they searched for the suspect. Those included a search at an apartment in Berlin's Schöneberg district in the early hours of Sunday, but police said they found no one there.
Julian Miethig, who had attended the Pride festival nearby, said he wanted to go to an after-party when he heard from a friend that “something bad happened there and there are a lot of fire trucks, a lot of emergency vehicles, ambulances.”
“It’s a dark day for the community,” he said.
According to police, a white van drove into the Tiergarten park around 10 p.m. and hit several people before colliding with a tree. The closing party at the Pride festival, known as Christopher Street Day, was ongoing at the time next to the Brandenburg Gate, a short distance away, following a parade with some 80 trucks that had made its way through downtown Berlin earlier in the day.
Police said a woman was killed. Berlin’s fire service said that three people sustained life-threatening injuries, another eight were seriously injured and five had slight injuries.
The Pride event next to the Brandenburg Gate was called off around 10:15 p.m. and a band’s performance on stage was interrupted. People were urged to go home and to avoid taking the route through the park.
One of the presenters at the Pride party, Ricarda Hofmann, wrote in an Instagram post that she had been there “not just as a moderator, but as part of a community that comes together to be visible. To celebrate love. To stand up for each other.”
She said the attack left her speechless. “What happened today has changed something in me,” she wrote.
Hundreds of thousands of people had come to Berlin to celebrate on Saturday, though it’s unclear how many were still at the festival by late evening. It’s one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ celebrations.
The van, with its battered front resting against a tree, could still be seen at the scene Sunday morning.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz described what happened as “an attack on our society.”
“What an abhorrent act in Berlin,” Merz wrote in a post on X. He added that Germany loves freedom, “and we will preserve and defend that.”
In the neighboring Netherlands, Amsterdam is hosting World Pride this week and next alongside its own annual Pride celebrations. Mayor Femke Halsema said authorities and organizers “are closely monitoring the security situation” after the Berlin attack.
She said security is always high for such events and extra measures will be added where necessary, "which visitors will hopefully notice as little as possible. Because we don’t want to be scared and we want to be able to celebrate freedom and being able to be who you are and love who you want to.”
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Associated Press reporters Kirsten Grieshaber and Fanny Brodersen in Berlin, and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.
