BERLIN,— German officials said Sunday that a deadly vehicle attack near Berlin’s Pride celebration the night before is being treated as an act of Islamist terrorism, as police searched for a suspect described as dangerous and possibly armed.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told reporters near the scene that all available evidence points to a terrorist act linked to Islamist extremism.
He said the suspected attacker had a history of criminal offenses and had shown signs of radicalization, along with ties to Islamist circles.
The attack happened around 10 p.m. Saturday when a white minivan drove into a crowd in Tiergarten park, close to the Brandenburg Gate.
The area sits near Christopher Street Day, one of Europe’s largest annual LGBTQ+ Pride events.
One person was killed, and 29 others were hurt, eight of them seriously, Dobrindt said. Fire officials reported that three of the injured were in life threatening condition, and some victims had stab wounds.
Dobrindt said Germany’s 16 states have been briefed on the attack and told to reassess security plans for large public gatherings, including future Pride events.
He warned that such violent acts could motivate others to carry out similar attacks.
Berlin police identified the suspect overnight as Abdul B. and released his photo, asking the public for help locating him.
They described him as slim, about 1.90 meters, or roughly 6 feet 2 inches tall, with black hair. He was last seen wearing a black hooded top and white pants. Police cautioned residents not to approach him directly.
Dobrindt said the suspect was born in Germany in 2005 and has Lebanese family background. Security officials told Reuters he had been released from juvenile detention just two months earlier.
They said he had reached out to the Islamic State militant group and was already known to Germany’s domestic intelligence service, placed among hundreds of individuals considered potentially dangerous, a status that typically brings ongoing monitoring.
Organizers of Christopher Street Day called off the rest of the event following the attack. Authorities said key details remain unclear, including whether the suspect acted alone, noting that more than one person may have exited the van after the crash.
Television footage from Reuters showed the white minivan wrecked against a tree Sunday morning. German tabloid Bild reported the vehicle was a rented Citroen delivery van and that investigators had searched the suspect’s home.
The attack lands at a difficult moment for Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose coalition government has faced criticism over its performance and is currently undergoing a rocky cabinet shake-up.
Regional elections are scheduled in two months, with the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, focusing its campaign on immigration and public safety as it seeks its first win in leading a state government.
AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla reacted quickly on social media platform X, writing that the party would not let religious extremists divide the country through violence and intolerance.
Germany has seen several vehicle-related assaults on crowds in recent years. In May, a man believed to have mental health problems drove into a pedestrian area in Leipzig, killing two people and seriously injuring three others.
In 2016, Anis Amri, a Tunisian national whose asylum request had been denied and who had connections to Islamist militants, hijacked a truck, killed its driver, and drove into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin.
That attack killed 11 people and injured dozens more. Amri was later shot dead by police in Italy four days afterward.
Separately, a court in Germany sentenced a Saudi doctor to life in prison in June 2026 after convicting him of killing six people and injuring hundreds when he drove a rented BMW into crowds at a historic Christmas market in Magdeburg just days before Christmas in 2024.
(With files from Reuters)
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