Investigators believe that the deadly attack near Berlin’s Pride parade on Saturday was motivated by Islamist ideology, Germany’s interior minister said Sunday.
“Everything we see here indicates that this was an Islamist terror attack,” Alexander Dobrindt told reporters at the scene, adding that the number of injured had gone up to 29. One woman was killed in the attack.
German police on Sunday were still hunting for the prime suspect.
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Police said there were indications that the suspect acted out of an Islamist ideology, with German media reporting he was a supporter of the so-called Islamic State (IS) group with a criminal conviction.
The incident late Saturday shattered what had been a day of celebration for hundreds of thousands attending Christopher Street Day (CSD), one of Europe’s largest Pride events.
How the attack unfolded
Shortly before 10:00pm (20:00 GMT) on Saturday, a white vehicle ran into people on the southern edge of central Berlin’s Tiergarten park before crashing into a tree.
Police say that “one or more” people then left the vehicle and fled the scene.
They say several people also suffered stab wounds.
Emergency services said one woman was killed and 16 others were injured, including three with life-threatening injuries.
The attack took place several hundred metres away from the end of the CSD parade route and the event’s main stage at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate.
The vehicle used in the attack, a Citroen minivan with a Berlin number plate, could be seen on Sunday morning still at the scene, heavily damaged by the impact with the tree.
Lines of police officers were combing the ground near the car in the search for clues and taking samples of material from the ground.
Shortly after the attack, the festivities were cut short, with revellers requested to leave the area.
Islamist-linked suspect
Police say that the prime suspect in the case is 21-year-old Abdul B. and put out an appeal for information on his whereabouts as well as his photo.
German newspapers Bild and Spiegel reported Abdul B. was an IS group supporter.
He was convicted in Germany of “preparing a serious act of subversive violence”, they said. Last year, he travelled to the Middle East in a failed attempt to join the IS group.
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Police described him as thin, around 1.90 metres (6.2 feet) tall with black hair and dressed in a black hoodie and white trousers.
A police spokesman earlier told reporters that Abdul B. was believed to have links to “Islamist circles”.
Police say that other suspects could be involved in the attack and that they would carry out searches at train stations in Berlin as part of the investigation.
‘Won’t beat us down’
German politicians were swift to react to the attack, with Berlin’s Mayor Kai Wegner condemning a “brutal attack” on “a gathering for a tolerant and peaceful Berlin”.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in the early hours of Sunday that he and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt were being informed of the investigation and vowed to bring those responsible for the “horrific act” to justice.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he was “shaken and outraged” by the attack, while the speaker of parliament Julia Kloeckner ordered the flag at the German Bundestag to be lowered to half mast.
There were also expressions of solidarity from abroad, with European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen expressing “her deepest sympathies” to the victims of the attack.
The governments of the Netherlands, France, Italy, Sweden and the UK also expressed their shock and condemnation.
Members of Berlin’s queer community said on social media that a vigil would be organised at 2:00pm local time on Sunday in front of the Brandenburg Gate for people to grieve the victims of the attack.
Armin Duenhoelter, 49, from Wolfsburg, who works as a drag artist, was backstage at the main stage when the celebrations were cut short.
He told AFP on Sunday morning he was still “shocked” by Saturday’s events even though “the events in recent years did make us think that one of our events could eventually become a target”.
He vowed to be back for next year’s CSD “even though in the back of your mind or in your gut you might feel uneasy”.
“But we won’t let it beat us down”.
Spate of attacks
Saturday’s attack revived memories of a string of similar incidents which have shaken Germany in recent years and inflamed debate on immigration, with several of the perpetrators being from outside Germany.
Martin Hess, a lawmaker from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) said in a statement that the attack was the result of “a complete failure of the government’s security policies”.
“Islamism is the greatest security threat for our country,” he said.
The deadliest attack in recent years was a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 by a Tunisian man with jihadist motives that killed 13 people.
The run-up to last year’s general election saw a spate of attacks in public places, including by attackers with Islamist motives.
However, the worst incident in that period saw a Saudi psychiatrist and anti-Islam activist, Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen, kill six people and wound more than 300 in a car-ramming at a busy Christmas market in the eastern city of Magdeburg in 2024.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, Reuters)
