Germany hunts Islamist suspect after Berlin Pride crowd ramming

[BERLIN] Germany launched a national manhunt on Sunday (Jul 26) for a known Islamist suspected of ploughing a minivan into a crowd near a huge LGBTQ Pride gathering in Berlin, killing one and injuring 29.

The attack happened in the Tiergarten park near the Brandenburg Gate at about 10 pm (2000 GMT), not far from one of Europe’s biggest annual LGBTQ celebrations, Christopher Street Day.

It was the latest in a series of vehicle attacks on crowds in Germany in recent years that have intensified debate around security and immigration amid a surge in support for the far-right.

Ahead of a memorial service at St Mary’s Church in Berlin, centre-right chancellor Friedrich Merz urged Germans to protect liberal values.

“We will defend the freedom, openness, and liberal spirit of our lives and our society with everything we can do,” he said.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told reporters at the scene of the attack that “everything we see here indicates that we are dealing with an Islamist terrorist attack”.

The suspect had “attracted attention in the past through a high number of criminal offences, through radicalisation, through membership of the Islamist scene”, Dobrindt said, adding that he was a German citizen of Lebanese heritage, born in Germany in 2005.

Berlin police identified the suspect as Abdul B, 21, and published his picture, asking the public for information on his whereabouts. They described him as slim, around 1.90 m tall, with black hair, and last seen wearing a black hooded top and white trousers.

But they also warned the public not to approach him, saying he was “possibly armed and dangerous”.

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Security sources told Reuters the suspect had been released from juvenile detention only two months ago.

They said he was known to domestic intelligence and was among the hundreds of people classed as potentially dangerous, a label that usually leads to scrutiny or monitoring.

After mowing people down with the vehicle, the attacker injured some with a bladed weapon, thought to have been a machete, Dobrindt said.

Thousands gather in mourning

Thousands of people, some carrying the LGBT rainbow flag, attended a vigil at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. Some carried placards with slogans such as “Hatred kills”, while others cried and hugged each other.

At the Tiergarten park, people lit candles and left flowers.

The fire service said overnight that three of the injured were in a life-threatening condition.

It was unclear whether the perpetrator had acted alone, since police said more than one person may have got out of the van. The Berlin broadcaster RBB said an Iranian who had been a passenger in the vehicle had been arrested.

Reuters TV footage from the scene on Sunday showed a white minivan crumpled into a tree. The mass-circulation newspaper Bild said it was a delivery vehicle that Abdul B had rented.

The attack comes at a sensitive time for Merz’s unpopular coalition government, which is going through a bruising cabinet reshuffle as critics accuse it of being ineffective.

State elections take place in two months, with the far-right opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD) campaigning on issues including immigration and security in a bid to secure control of a regional government for the first time.

The AfD was quick to comment on the attack.

“We will not allow religious extremists to divide our country with violence and intolerance!” AfD co-chief Tino Chrupalla said on X.

In May, a man believed to have mental health problems drove into a pedestrian zone in Leipzig, killing two people and seriously injuring three.

In 2016, Anis Amri, a Tunisian failed asylum seeker with links to Islamist militants, hijacked a truck, killed its driver and drove it into a busy Christmas market, killing 11 people and injuring dozens. He was shot dead by police in Italy four days later. REUTERS