BERLIN (AP) — A car drove into a crowd during Berlin's famed LGBTQ+ parade on Saturday and injured several people, prompting police to call off the event in the German capital hours after it had begun. Police said some of the victims had life-threatening injuries.
Police, who did not say how many were injured, called on everyone in a post on X to leave the premises of the event immediately. A short while later, police said a car had driven into the Tiergarten
park, near the route of the pride march, hitting several people.
Police did not know how many officers had been deployed to the scene but that it was “definitely a lot of police.” They said they were searching for suspects.
“We are conducting an intensive search for possible suspects,” a police officer said on a short video released on the Berlin police account on X.
While the exact number of injured people wasn’t immediately clear, police said that several people were severely injured, and that some of them suffered life-threatening injuries. Firefighters and ambulances were out with many emergency staffers at the park to attend to the victims.
Hundreds of thousands of people had come to Berlin on Saturday to celebrate at Berlin’s pride parade, known in Germany as Christopher Street Day. It’s one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ celebrations.
The pride event in front of the city's iconic Brandenburg Gate in downtown 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 Tiergarten park.
Before the incident, people had celebrated peacefully, marching through the city for hours, dancing to loud music, and cheering the around 80 floats that participated in the parade.
