What happened?
On Saturday night, around 10 p.m., a white van drove into a crowd about 100 meters (328 ft) from the Christopher Street Day celebrations near the Brandenburg Gate in the center of Berlin. Police spokesman Florian Nath said the van drove through the park parallel to the main road and struck several people before hitting a tree. Nath said, after this the driver left the van and ran away in an unknown direction.
Police later confirmed that the vehicle was privately owned and not rented. It was removed from the crime scene on Sunday.
Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CDU) later said that a suspect was believed to have attacked the people with a blade-like weapon, possibly a knife, before fleeing.
The area around the crime scene was widely blocked on Saturday night, after organizers canceled the rest of the event and evacuated festival-goers. Police searched the Tiergarten area with infrared cameras throughout the night, said spokesman Nath.
Who was injured, who was killed?
One woman died after the attack, and 29 people were injured – many of them seriously.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on social media in response to the attack, “This is an attack on our society.” Which he described as “heinous”. People attacked near the closing party of the Christopher Street Day Parade, which celebrates LGBTQ+ rights.
By Sunday afternoon, police confirmed that none of the injured were in life-threatening condition.
Who is the suspect?
Eyewitness accounts initially suggested that multiple attackers were involved, leading police to initially search for more than one perpetrator.
Interior Minister Dobrindt said on Sunday that the main suspect is 21-year-old Abdul B, who was known to authorities to have committed a “large number” of previous attacks and to be radicalized. In accordance with the German press code, Deutsche Welle refrains from publishing the full names of criminal suspects.
Prosecutors say Abdul B shared online propaganda for the so-called Islamic State (or IS) terrorist group and recently made an unsuccessful attempt to join the group in Syria.
He later distanced himself from IS. Abdul B. Was born in Germany and holds German citizenship. His mother is of Lebanese origin.
On Sunday evening, Berlin’s Senate Department of Internal Affairs told media that fugitive suspect Abdul B. was shot dead in a police operation in a garden allotment in Spandau, Berlin’s westernmost borough. The interior minister has since said there is no longer any threat to the public.
What was the purpose?
The exact motive has not been established, but based on the history of the main suspect, authorities are currently treating it as a terrorist act.
“Everything we’re seeing here suggests this was an Islamic terrorist attack,” Dobrindt said Sunday.
As a result, the Federal Public Prosecutor General will now investigate, as Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig has confirmed.
This office usually investigates serious crimes affecting the internal or external security of Germany, such as terrorism, treason or espionage.
where do we go from here?
Hundreds of mourners gathered at the Brandenburg Gate on Sunday, despite a search operation still ongoing at the time, to mourn the victims of the attack and express anger and shock at what they saw as an attack on the LBGTQ+ community.
“Yesterday was an attack on all of us,” one speaker said, “on all of our identities, our existence, our community and our democracy.” But we won’t let it defeat us.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said, “This is an attack on our open society, our way of life and our ability to live together.”
This year, many major elections are going to be held in many German states and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is leading in the elections there. Saturday’s deadly attack is likely to intensify the debate around migration and security – two topics the AfD has been pushing for with a nationalist and anti-immigrant stance.
The car crash on Saturday was reminiscent of similar deadly attacks in recent years, raising concerns about police preparedness for large events and security responses to known criminals.
Edited by: Rana Taha
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