<\/p>\n
People gather in front of the Brandenburg Gate illuminated with the message “Berlin, city of freedom”, commemorating the victims, after a car rammed into a crowd at the Pride March in Berlin, Sunday, July 26, 2026.<\/p>\n
Ebrahim Noroozi\/AP Photo\/Ebrahim Noroozi<\/p>\n
People gather in front of the Brandenburg Gate illuminated with the message “Berlin, city of freedom”, commemorating the victims, after a car rammed into a crowd at the Pride March in Berlin, Sunday, July 26, 2026.<\/p>\n
Ebrahim Noroozi\/AP Photo\/Ebrahim Noroozi<\/p>\n
Police officers stand near a vehicle crashed into a tree after driving into a crowd near Berlin’s annual Pride event, in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026.<\/p>\n
Markus Schreiber\/AP Photo\/Markus Schreiber<\/p>\n
Two men hold hands at the memorial site commemorating the victims near the scene where a car rammed into a crowd near the Pride March in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026.<\/p>\n
Markus Schreiber\/AP Photo\/Markus Schreiber<\/p>\n
People gather outside the Brandenburg Gate for a demonstration in support of LGBTQ+ after a car rammed into a crowd at the Pride March in Berlin, Sunday, July 26, 2026.<\/p>\n
Ebrahim Noroozi\/AP Photo\/Ebrahim Noroozi<\/p>\n
BERLIN (AP) \u2014 The suspect in the deadly Berlin Pride attack that left one person dead and 29 injured was shot and killed by police during a confrontation on Sunday in a suburb of the city, authorities said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, was killed following a search that lasted nearly 24 hours after the attack in downtown Berlin. Prosecutors said he had previously sought to join the militant Islamic State group.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Ballout was suspected of driving a van into a crowd near Berlin\u2019s Pride festival Saturday night before apparently stabbing others with a machete in what authorities believe was an Islamic extremist terror attack.<\/p>\n
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the attack occurred a few hundred meters (yards) from a party near the Brandenburg Gate that was supposed to close out the city’s Pride festival.<\/p>\n
Ballout was tracked down around 6 p.m. Sunday at a garden in Spandau, a Berlin suburb, the city’s police department wrote on X. They said he apparently ran toward officers with a sharp instrument, and police fired at least one shot. He died at the scene.<\/p>\n
Ballout was born in Germany, the minister said. His mother was naturalized in 2002, three years before he was born.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Ashley Jump, a 26-year-old U.K. resident, had traveled to Berlin for Saturday\u2019s Pride parade but had left the celebrations before the attack. They returned Sunday to leave flowers at a memorial near the crime scene in support of the LGBTQ+ community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll never erase us, we\u2019ll never be gone,\u201d they said. \u201cAs long as humanity has existed, we\u2019ve existed. And as long as humanity exists, we will exist. We will not be removed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suspect convicted of ties to Islamic extremism<\/p>\n
Ballout traveled to Lebanon in 2025 with the goal of going to Syria to join the Islamic State group, Berlin prosecutors said Sunday.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
There, he made contact with several people who were presumed members of the militant group \u2014 or at least he believed them to be, prosecutors said. He was arrested in Lebanon last year and sentenced by a military court to three months\u2019 imprisonment for offenses including incitement to religious and sectarian conflict.<\/p>\n
He returned to Germany after completing his sentence, where he was arrested at the Berlin airport.<\/p>\n
In May, a juvenile court in Berlin convicted Ballout of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state, as well as publishing Islamic State propaganda on his Instagram account and other charges, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
The court handed down a suspended sentence of 1 year and 10 months in youth custody, which Berlin prosecutors had appealed.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The court said it took Ballout\u2019s months of pre-trial detention in Germany and Lebanon into account. It also said it considered that Ballout had confessed to the crimes, appeared to distance himself from the militant group and no actual threat had ever materialized.<\/p>\n
He was released from detention pending the appeal.<\/p>\n
Berlin’s Pride festival is one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ celebrations<\/p>\n
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. The party followed a parade with some 80 trucks that had made its way through downtown Berlin earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The attack did not occur at the festival, along its route or at the closing party. Rather, the violence took place a few hundred meters (yards) away on a track in the Tiergarten park. The van drove into a crowd that was likely a mix of festivalgoers and other locals or visitors.<\/p>\n
Police said a woman was killed.<\/p>\n
On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of mourners gathered at a memorial at the iconic gate. They hugged each other and laid down flowers, candles, rainbow flags and homemade signs, including a cardboard one that said: \u201cthe only thing more powerful than hate is love.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hundreds of thousands had come to Berlin to celebrate on Saturday, though it\u2019s unclear how many were still at the festival by late evening. It\u2019s one of Europe\u2019s largest LGBTQ+ celebrations.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are simply stunned by what happened,\u201d said Andre Lehmann, a top official with the main national LGBTQ+ association, LSVD+. \u201cThis suspected attack hits the heart of the queer community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amsterdam says it will celebrate freedom in the wake of Berlin attack<\/p>\n
Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged the nation to remain united in the aftermath of the attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to say this to Christopher Street Day participants here in Berlin but also across Germany: Don\u2019t let yourselves, let us not let ourselves, be intimidated,” he said. “These acts have only one purpose: They aim to divide our society. They want to take away from us the most important thing we have: Namely our openness and our freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Dobrindt said he expected security measures at other major events in Germany, including Pride events elsewhere, to be reviewed and if necessary significantly boosted.<\/p>\n
Berlin has seen Islamic extremist attacks before. In December, 2016, a rejected asylum seeker from Tunisia plowed a hijacked truck into a Christmas market, killing 13 people and injuring dozens. He was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.<\/p>\n
In February last year, a Spanish tourist was stabbed and seriously wounded at Berlin\u2019s Holocaust Memorial, an attack that saw a Syrian man convicted in March and sentenced to 13 years.<\/p>\n
![\"Promo](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/rawImage.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Access our new app with ad-free reading, curated maps and more.<\/p>\n