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Police officer Ali Darwich poses for a portrait near the scene where a car rammed into a crowd at the Pride March in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026.<\/p>\n
Markus Schreiber\/AP Photo\/Markus Schreiber<\/p>\n
Ashley Jump lays flowers 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
Two people hug at the memorial site commemorating the victims near the scene where a car rammed into a crowd at the Pride March in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026.<\/p>\n
Markus Schreiber\/AP Photo\/Markus Schreiber<\/p>\n
People attend 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 For Ali Darwich, the deadly attack on the Berlin Pride Festival was an attack on the city of Berlin and everything it stands for: its diversity, its tolerance and its belief in freedom.<\/p>\n
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On a personal level, it also was an attack on everything the Berliner embodies.<\/p>\n
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\u201cBorn a Muslim, living as a gay man, working as a police officer,” Darwich said, as he tried holding back the tears, \u201cthis terror attack touches so many aspects of who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saturday night’s van ramming and stabbing near Berlin\u2019s Pride festival that left one person dead and many others wounded was believed to have been an Islamic extremist terror attack, authorities said.<\/p>\n
The suspect in the attack was killed by police Sunday evening in a Berlin suburb. Authorities said Abdul Ballout, a 21-year-old German citizen with Lebanese roots, apparently ran toward officers with a sharp instrument, and police fired at least one shot.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Darwich, 34, watched sadly as more and more members of the LGBTQ+ community came to Tiergarten park, where the attack took place. They put down flowers, hugged each other and looked in disbelief at the crashed van, which still stood cordoned off behind dozens of police officers.<\/p>\n
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Like Darwich, many of them had been celebrating life and love just hours earlier, protesting for equality and warning of an increase of hate crimes against their community.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was wearing my rainbow-colored shirt, carried a banner at the parade saying \u2018Why are some people afraid of love but not of hate?,\u2019 and was about to go to an afterparty last night, when friends started calling me to check if I was OK,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When he understood that there had been an attack, he canceled the party and went home filled with sorrow. But it was only after he woke up on Sunday morning that he truly grasped the significance of the attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked myself, why as a police officer I did not run to the scene of the crash to help my colleagues. I asked myself as a gay if we will have to live with more fear now even though we are already experiencing bullying and hatred. I asked myself as a Muslim if our community will be exposed to even more racism now.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Darwich, who was born in Berlin and has Lebanese and Palestinian roots, expressed worry that the attack would polarize German society even more.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m actually feeling desperate this morning,” said Darwich, who also works as a gay Muslim influencer and posts many videos on social media that usually try to strike a positive note. \u201cWe can\u2019t get rid of the hatred some people feel, and it\u2019s just getting worse and worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
But at the same time, he said he did not want to let hate win and that deep inside he still hoped that “the people of Berlin will make the best of it, that they will work together, and that, hopefully, all of this will lead to an even better Berlin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Others, who had come to the impromptu vigil at Tiergarten, also expressed anger and shock, but also resilience.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe are simply stunned by what happened yesterday,\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
The attack \u201caffects people who took to the street in Berlin this weekend to fight for their rights, their diversity and their rights, and of course with that it is a political act and does not just affect people celebrating,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Lehmann said that there has been \u201ca tenfold increase of anti-queer hate crime in Germany within a few years.\u201d He added that \u201cfor years, to be honest, nothing has happened and also, to be honest, for years there has been no outcry from society.\u201d<\/p>\n
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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. Jump, still in shock, returned Sunday to leave flowers at a memorial near the crime scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll never erase us, we\u2019ll never be gone,\u201d they said, their voice shivering from pain. \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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police officer Ali Darwich poses for a portrait near the scene where a car rammed into a crowd…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[47472,47473,47474,47475,18,47471,640,641,638,639,2293],"class_list":["post-61813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-abdul-ballout","tag-ali-darwich","tag-andre-lehmann","tag-ashley-jump","tag-berlin","tag-germany-lgbtq-attack-reactions","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-32502-ap-online-europe-news","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}