Abdul Ballout, the 21-year-old identified as the alleged perpetrator of the van attack at the Gay Pride in Berlin, has died. Confirmation came from the Berlin police: the officers identified him around 6pm in an urban garden colony in the Spandau district. According to the police report, the young man approached the officers with a bladed weapon and the special forces opened fire; the alleged attacker died on the spot despite resuscitation attempts.
The raid on the garden colony
The operation took place in a garden colony in the Ruhlebener Straße area, in Spandau, at the end of a day of nationwide manhunt. The news had been anticipated by the newspaper Bild and by the issuer rbbwho had reported a firefight inside a garden shed: the officers would have been attacked and responded. Witnesses on site had reported shots fired.
The Berlin police have arrested one person and identified a second suspect of having carried out the attack during the Gay Pride in Berlin last night, breaking into the crowd with a van and killing a woman. An Iranian man who was aboard the van was arrested while the hunt for 21-year-old Abdul Ballout began. It is not ruled out that there are other people involved.
The attack on Berlin Pride was “an Islamist terrorist attack”, said German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, adding that Abdul Ballout’s mother obtained German citizenship in 2002 (the family is originally from Lebanon). At the same time, it was specified that in addition to the victim, there were 29 injured.
Non-life threatening injuries
The police provide information on the state of health of the injured. Their lives are no longer in danger, a police spokesperson said. None of the injured hospitalized are currently in life-threatening condition. It reports it dpa.
Moments of terror
Berlin is plunged into terror at the end of a festive day characterized by Gay Pride celebrations complete with concerts, parades and music. Celebrations abruptly ended in the evening around 10pm, when a white minivan was seen entering the Tiergarten city park and hitting the crowd. Initially, one of the suspects fled on foot after the white van crashed into a tree once it hit people. “We are actively searching for one or more people suspected of being involved in the incident,” said the police, who mobilized a “large deployment of forces” and cordoned off the area between Potsdamer Platz and the southern side of the Tiergarten tunnel in search of clues and evidence. According to what witnesses reported, some people were also injured by stab wounds.
«An integral part of the investigations – explained the police – is to verify whether there was a second phase of the crime after the one in which the vehicle was moving. If someone then got out of the vehicle and attacked people with possible cutting weapons, injuring them.” The police hope to receive further reports from the population and have created a dedicated portal for this purpose. The organizers of Christopher Street Day (CSD), one of the largest LGBTQ+ parades in Europe, made an immediate decision to cancel the event, asking participants to “go home”. Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner spoke of an «attack on our free society open to the world. Berlin is the city of freedom – and today our freedom was attacked in the most terrible way.”
Merz: «Abominable act»
“We will work with particular determination to thoroughly investigate this abominable act and ensure that it is punished,” said German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Hundreds of thousands of people took part in the Christopher Street Day in Berlin on Saturday under the slogan “Haltung ist hot” (Taking a stand is “hot”). The annual demonstrations of the CSD commemorate June 28, 1969, when the police raided the “Stonewall Inn”, a gay bar in New York. Days of clashes with activists followed – events widely considered the birth of the modern gay and lesbian rights movement.
The German capital is still reeling from the stabbing of a Spanish tourist at the nearby Holocaust Memorial in February 2025, just two days before parliamentary elections. On March 5, 2026, a young Syrian man was sentenced to 13 years in prison for the attack – one of many carried out particularly by foreigners – which fueled the rise of the German far right.