Suspect In Deadly Berlin Pride Attack Killed In Confrontation With Police

BERLIN (AP) — Suspicious Deadly Berlin Pride attack The incident left one person dead and 29 injured and was shot dead by police in a suburb of the city on Sunday, authorities said.

Abdul Ballout, a German citizen of Lebanese origin, was killed after a search that lasted approximately 24 hours following the attack in Berlin city center. Prosecutors said he had previously tried to join the militant Islamic State group.

Ballout is suspected of driving a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride Festival on Saturday night and then stabbing others with a machete in what authorities believe was an assault. Islamic extremist terrorist attack.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the attack took place near the Brandenburg Gate, a few hundred meters from the party that was expected to close the city’s Pride festival.

The ball was tracked into a garden in the Berlin suburb of Spandau at around 18:00 on Sunday, the city’s police department wrote to X. The police department said he ran toward officers, apparently holding a sharp instrument, and police fired at least one shot. He died at the scene.

The minister said Ballout was born in Germany. His mother was naturalized in 2002, three years before he was born.

British citizen Ashley Jump, 26, had traveled to Berlin for Saturday’s Pride Parade but left the celebrations before the attack. They returned Sunday to lay flowers at a memorial near the scene in support of the LGBTQ+ community.

They said, “They will never be able to erase us, we will never disappear.” “We exist as long as humanity exists. We will exist as long as humanity exists. We will not be destroyed.”

Berlin prosecutors said on Sunday that Ballout traveled to Lebanon in 2025 with the intention of going to Syria to join the Islamic State group.

There he came into contact with several people who were presumed to be members of the militant group, or at least believed to be so, prosecutors said. He was arrested in Lebanon last year and sentenced to three months in prison by a military court for crimes that included inciting religious and sectarian conflict.

After completing his sentence, he returned to Germany, where he was arrested at Berlin airport.

Prosecutors said a juvenile court in Berlin in May convicted Ballout of preparing a serious act of violence that would endanger the state, as well as posting Islamic State propaganda on his Instagram account and other charges.

The court sentenced the young people to 1 year and 10 months of suspended detention, which Berlin prosecutors objected to.

The court said it took into account Ballout’s months of pre-trial detention in Germany and Lebanon. He also stated that Ballout had confessed to the crimes, had distanced himself from the militant group and thought no real threat had occurred.

He was released from detention upon objection.

According to police, a white van entered Tiergarten park around 10pm and hit several people before crashing into a tree. at the closing party pride festivalknown as Christopher Street Dayat the time it continued near the Brandenburg Gate, a short distance away. The party followed a parade of about 80 trucks that passed through Berlin city center earlier in the day.

The attack did not occur at the festival, along the festival route or at the closing party. Rather, the violence took place on a track in the Tiergarten park a few hundred meters (yards) away. The van drove into a crowd that was likely a mix of festivalgoers and other locals or visitors.

Police said a woman was killed.

Hundreds of mourners gathered at the memorial at the iconic gate on Sunday afternoon. They hugged each other and left flowers, candles, rainbow flags and homemade signs; Among them was a cardboard that read “The only thing stronger than hate is love.”

Hundreds of thousands of people had come to Berlin to celebrate on Saturday, but it was not clear how many people were still at the festival by late evening. One of the largest in Europe LGBTQ+ celebrations.

“We are stunned by what happened,” said Andre Lehmann, a senior official at LSVD+, the main national LGBTQ+ association. “This suspicious attack strikes at the heart of the gay community.”

Chancellor Friedrich Merz called on the nation to remain united following the attack.

“I want to say this to Christopher Street Day participants here in Berlin and also all over Germany: Don’t be intimidated, and neither will we,” he said. “These actions have one goal: They aim to divide our society. They want to take away from us the most important thing we have: our openness and freedom.”

Dobrindt said he expected security measures at other major events in Germany, including Pride events elsewhere, to be reviewed and significantly increased if necessary.

Berlin has witnessed Islamic extremist attacks before. A Tunisian asylum seeker was rejected in December 2016 drove the hijacked truck to the Christmas marketIt caused the death of 13 people and the injury of dozens of people. He was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

In February last year, a Spanish tourist was stabbed and seriously injured at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. A Syrian man took part in the attack. He was found guilty and sentenced in March Up to 13 years.

This week, Amsterdam will host the World Pride Parade, as well as its own annual Pride celebrations. Mayor Femke Halsema said authorities and organizers were “closely monitoring the security situation” following the Berlin attack but aimed to prevent extra precautions from getting in the way of celebrating freedom and love.

Associated Press reporters Fanny Brodersen and Pietro De Cristofaro in Berlin and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.