Shortly after 10:00 PM on Saturday, a van was driven into a crowd gathered for Berlin’s Christopher Street Day (CSD) pride festival in Tiergarten park, one of the largest urban parks in Germany, close to the Brandenburg Gate. One woman was killed and 29 people were injured — several of them critically. The suspect drove the vehicle through the crowd at the closing party of the festival, which had drawn hundreds of thousands of attendees during the day. He then fled the scene on foot, allegedly attacking further people with a machete before abandoning both the van and the weapon in the park.

German authorities launched a large-scale manhunt. On Sunday, the suspect was located at an allotment garden complex in Spandau, a northwestern suburb of Berlin. When officers approached, he ran toward them armed with a bladed weapon. Police opened fire; he died at the scene despite resuscitation efforts.

On Sunday, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt named the suspect as Abdul Ballout, a 21-year-old man born in Germany with Lebanese roots. Dobrindt said Ballout had been known to authorities for “a high number” of previous offences and for being radicalised. He had previously been convicted of “preparing a serious act of subversive violence” — a charge arising from a failed attempt to join ISIS/ISIL — for which he received a suspended sentence of one year and ten months. Dobrindt stated plainly: “Everything we see here points to us dealing with an Islamist terror attack.”

Berlin’s Christopher Street Day is one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ festivals. Named after the New York street where the 1969 Stonewall Inn is located, it commemorates those historic riots and draws hundreds of thousands of Berliners and tourists each year. This year’s event had been entirely peaceful until the attack brought it to an abrupt end. The following day, around 10,000 people gathered at Pariser Platz, laying flowers and notes outside the Brandenburg Gate in an impromptu memorial. A march from Marienkirche to the gate was also planned for the same afternoon.

The attack fits a grim recent pattern in Germany. The Magdeburg Christmas market attack in December 2024 killed several people; a vehicle attack on a Munich trade union demonstration earlier this year killed two and injured more than forty, including children. Saturday’s events have renewed urgent questions in the German parliament about how individuals previously convicted for terror-related offences and known to be radicalised are able to carry out mass-casualty attacks — and what systemic failures allow them to do so.