Germans were left in shock and mourning on Sunday after what authorities called an Islamist terror attack on one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ events.
Hundreds of people flocked on Sunday evening to the Tiergarten, the central city park where Abdul Ballout has been accused of driving a van into a crowd of people on the sidelines of the Pride festivities late Saturday night.
They laid flowers and candles along the Ahornsteig, the tree-lined pedestrian path where one woman was killed and 29 people were injured. Other vigils were scheduled across the city.
Some mourners had been part of the Pride celebration when the attack happened. “We were just lucky and decided to go to another stage,” said Maik Pfeiffer, who traveled across the country with friends for the party. When the crowd was told to leave the area, they didn’t immediately know why, he said: “People came running at us and asked if we were all right. We didn’t know what was happening.”
Germany’s politicians called the attack an assault on the country’s openness and free way of life, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz describing the incident as “an attack on our society” and saying those responsible would be pursued “with the utmost severity.”
“We will not allow that this poison — that terrorism and this poison — against our freedom takes hold further in our society,” Merz said before a memorial service on Sunday. “We will defend the freedom, openness and liberality of our life and our society with everything we have.”
Police fanned out in pursuit of the suspect on Sunday. Speaking at a press conference, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt identified Ballout, 21, as a German citizen whose mother was naturalized in 2002 after immigrating from Lebanon.
“Everything we see here points to us dealing with an Islamist terror attack,” Dobrindt said.
Ballout is alleged to have attacked additional people with a machete after driving the van into the crowd.
“It was a horrific scene,” Dobrindt said, noting that the van left multiple injured people scattered in its wake along a pedestrian path through the park. Others at the scene quickly administered first aid, he said, followed shortly by mounted police officers already in the vicinity.
One or more people are believed to have fled the vehicle, police said, adding that the suspect at large may be armed and dangerous.
German-born Ballout was a known Islamic State sympathizer. He tried to travel to Syria last year and tried to join the jihadist militant organization before being taken into custody in Lebanon in July 2025, according to a joint statement of the Office of the Berlin Public Prosecutor General and Berlin Higher Regional Court. He served three months in detention there before being returned to Germany in November, where he was taken into custody and remained in detention six months while awaiting trial.
In May, a Berlin court sentenced him to one year and 10 months of juvenile detention. However, the sentence was deferred, with the court noting that Ballout had distanced himself from Islamic State and largely confessed in his trial.
On Sunday, the search for the suspect continued across Berlin and at airports and Germany’s borders. The investigation into Saturday’s attack will be transferred to the federal level, Dobrindt said.
Dozens of officers searched an apartment in the Tiergarten district, a short distance from the attack site, the Bild said. Heavily armed police were also seen at the nearby Anhalter Bahnhof subway station, the newspaper reported. On July 3, authorities searched Ballout’s apartment at an address in Berlin’s Schoeneberg district on suspicion of a weapons possession, but found only a toy weapon.
At the memorial service Sunday afternoon at St. Mary’s Church in central Berlin, a Pride flag was draped at the front of the church and participants lit candles. A representative of Berlin’s Muslim community in Berlin made remarks, saying that universal values of human life hold true across religions.
The incident is likely to further inflame tensions over immigration in Germany that have driven increasing support to the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party in recent years. AfD is currently the strongest party in Germany with 28% support, according to a recent Insa poll.
Closely watched elections are coming up in September in Berlin, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. AfD is already the strongest party in the latter two states, both in the former East Germany.
Saturday’s attack came a week after Germany raised its threat level over the risk of terror incidents.
“The increased volume of reporting and intelligence has prompted me to raise the previously defined abstract threat level to a high threat level,” Dobrint told Welt am Sonntag in a July 18 interview.
Vehicles have been the weapon of choice in terror attacks many times in Europe over the past decade, including in Berlin. A Tunisian man who’d been rejected for asylum killed 13 people in an attack on one of the city’s largest Christmas markets in 2016, an incident that drove criticism of former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-border refugee policy.
Security had been tight along the Berlin parade route on Saturday, with a strong police presence and barriers — including the kind used to deter car attacks — blocking streets. Hundreds of thousands of people marched along a route through Tiergarten toward a closing rally at the Brandenburg Gate.
“Berlin is the city of freedom — and our freedom has been horrifically violated,” Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner said on X.