Vehicle and Blade Attack at Berlin Pride Kills One, Injures Dozens; Suspect Killed by Police

A van drove into a crowd near Berlin’s Christopher Street Day festivities Saturday night, and the driver then attacked bystanders with a bladed weapon, killing one person and injuring at least 29 others. German authorities are treating it as an act of Islamist terrorism, and the suspect was shot dead by police roughly 24 hours later.

The attack happened around 10 p.m. on July 25 in Berlin’s Tiergarten, on Ahornsteig near Lennéstraße, close to Potsdamer Platz and at the edge of the day’s CSD Berlin Pride celebrations. Witnesses described a van driving roughly 100 meters into a crowd of pedestrians before the driver got out and used a machete-style blade on some of those hit. CSD Berlin’s remaining festivities were canceled in the attack’s aftermath.

The injury toll rose through the following day. Berlin’s city government initially reported 14 injured; by midday Sunday, German broadcaster ZDF put the number at 16, including three in life-threatening condition. By Sunday evening, the confirmed total had climbed to at least 29 injured, with police saying no one remained in life-threatening condition. One woman died at the scene or shortly after.

Police identified the suspect as Abdul Ballout, a 21-year-old German citizen of Lebanese background who was already known to law enforcement. According to German reporting, Ballout had a prior conviction and was serving a suspended sentence of roughly one year and ten months, on probation with a court-ordered deradicalization program — he had attended only two of 26 scheduled sessions. Investigators say he had expressed sympathy for ISIS.

Ballout fled the scene, triggering a manhunt across the city that included a public appeal with his photo. Police located him Sunday evening in a garden-colony area in Berlin-Spandau. According to police accounts, he charged officers with a bladed weapon; a special police unit shot him, and he died at the scene despite resuscitation efforts.

Germany’s Federal Prosecutor’s Office — the body that handles suspected terrorism cases — took over the investigation, a procedural signal of how seriously authorities are treating the attack’s motive. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said “everything we see points to us dealing with an Islamist terror attack.”

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner called it “an attack on our free and cosmopolitan society,” adding that “Berlin is the city of freedom — and our freedom has been horribly attacked today.” He later thanked police for apprehending the suspect within 24 hours. Chancellor Friedrich Merz described it as “an attack on our society” and urged the public not to be intimidated.

Some German outlets reported an unconfirmed claim that a second person, described as an Iranian national, had been arrested overnight as a possible accomplice who allegedly sat in the attack vehicle. Berlin police told reporters they could not confirm this, and TrueQueer is not treating it as established fact pending official confirmation.

Christopher Street Day marks one of Europe’s oldest and largest Pride traditions, drawing hundreds of thousands to Berlin’s streets each summer in a city whose LGBTQ+ history includes both the vibrant Weimar-era queer culture that flourished in the 1920s and the persecution that followed under the Nazi regime. That history makes an attack timed to CSD land with particular weight for Berlin’s queer community and for the wider European Pride season, which was already underway in cities from Amsterdam to Bucharest.

Investigators have not released further details on Ballout’s specific ties to the CSD event or whether attendees were deliberately targeted as Pride participants versus general pedestrians in the area. TrueQueer will update this story as German authorities release additional confirmed information.

If you’re affected by this story and need support, Germany’s national hotline network and LGBTQ+ community organizations, including Berlin’s own CSD organizing committee, have published information for those seeking help in the attack’s aftermath.