German authorities say a man who drove a van into people near Berlin’s pride festival before attacking others with a machete had previously attempted to travel to Syria and join the Islamic State. One woman was killed, and 29 people were injured in what officials described as an act of Islamist terrorism.
Hundreds of thousands of people attended Saturday’s Christopher Street Day parade, one of Europe’s largest LGBT events. Earlier in the day, roughly 80 parade trucks moved through central Berlin before a closing celebration was held near the Brandenburg Gate.
The attack unfolded shortly before 10 p.m. in Tiergarten park, where police said the van struck several people before crashing into a tree, according to The Associated Press. The incident occurred on a park path several hundred yards from the closing event rather than along the parade route itself.
A police spokesperson said witnesses reported seeing injured victims lying on the ground following the machete attack.
Authorities identified the suspect as Abdul Ballout, a 21-year-old German citizen of Lebanese descent. Police said he had previously tried to enter Syria to join the Islamic State and had later participated in a de-radicalization program.
More than 2,000 police officers were deployed during the search for Ballout, according to The Telegraph.
Officers found him at approximately 6 p.m. Sunday in a garden allotment in Spandau on the outskirts of Berlin, ending a manhunt that lasted nearly 24 hours. Police said Ballout ran toward officers while carrying a bladed weapon, prompting them to fire at least one shot. He died at the scene.
Ballout had previously been convicted of serious bodily injury and coercion before becoming radicalized, according to the German newspaper Welt.
Berlin prosecutors said Ballout traveled to Lebanon in 2025 with the intention of reaching Syria and joining the Islamic State. Lebanese authorities arrested him, and a military court sentenced him to three months in prison for inciting religious and sectarian conflict.
After completing the sentence, Ballout returned to Germany and was detained upon arriving at a Berlin airport. In May, a juvenile court convicted him of preparing a serious act of violence against the state and sharing Islamic State propaganda on Instagram. He received a suspended sentence of one year and 10 months in youth detention, which prosecutors appealed.
Judges cited Ballout’s confession and what appeared to be his rejection of the terrorist organization, allowing him to remain free while the appeal was pending.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt reportedly said Ballout’s Lebanese-born mother obtained German citizenship in 2002, three years before his birth.
Germany has experienced several attacks in public spaces in recent years.
In February 2025, a Spanish tourist was seriously injured in a stabbing at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial. A Syrian man identified as Wassim Al M was sentenced to 13 years in prison in March for carrying out the assault.
Last month, Saudi psychiatrist Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen, 51, received a life sentence for killing six people and injuring more than 300 others when he drove a rented SUV through a Christmas market in Magdeburg in 2024.
One of Germany’s deadliest vehicle attacks occurred in December 2016, when a Tunisian man whose asylum application had been denied drove a hijacked truck into a Berlin Christmas market. The attack killed either 12 or 13 people, according to differing accounts, and the suspect was later killed in a shootout with police in Italy.
