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German police shot and killed Abdul Ballout, the 21-year-old suspected of driving a van into crowds at Berlin's Pride celebration, on Sunday evening in the city's Spandau district, Al Jazeera reported. The shooting ended a manhunt that lasted nearly 24 hours.
Officers located Ballout around 6 p.m. local time at an allotment garden complex in Spandau. Police said he ran toward officers while armed with a bladed weapon, and they opened fire. He died at the scene despite resuscitation efforts by the Berlin Fire Department.
The attack came Saturday evening at Christopher Street Day, one of Europe's largest LGBTQ+ events, held near the Brandenburg Gate. A vehicle drove into the crowd, killing one person and injuring at least 29, CBS News and the Associated Press reported. Berlin's fire service said three of the injured suffered life-threatening wounds and eight more were seriously hurt. Some victims had stab wounds, and officials said the attacker is believed to have injured people with a machete.
"Everything we see here points to us dealing with an Islamic terror attack," Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said Sunday, hours before the suspect was found. Police described Ballout as part of Berlin's Islamist scene and known to authorities. Dobrindt said he was born in Germany and had a prior conviction that carried a suspended sentence of one year and ten months. Investigators are still working to establish whether he acted alone. Police said earlier that one or more people may have left the vehicle after it stopped.
The ramming is the latest in a series of vehicle attacks on public gatherings in Germany. A car drove into a Christmas market in Magdeburg in December 2024, killing six people and injuring hundreds. Two months later, a driver killed a woman and her two-year-old daughter at a demonstration in Munich. Two more people died when a car rammed a crowd in Mannheim in March 2025. Chancellor Friedrich Merz described Saturday's ramming as an attack on freedom and said those responsible would be brought to justice.
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