Berlin Pride van ramming was Islamist terrorist attack, minister says

A nationwide manhunt is under way in Germany after what officials in Berlin are treating as an Islamist terrorist attack on Berlin's Pride parade.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said on Sunday that the suspect had used a machete after the van-ramming attack, leaving one woman dead and 29 people injured, some seriously. 

The suspected attacker sought by German police was already known to authorities and involved in a “high level of criminal activity,” Dobrindt said at a press conference.

The German-born man is believed to have been radicalized and to have been part of an Islamist milieu, based on initial findings, Dobrindt said.

The suspect had previously been given a suspended sentence of one year and ten months. The public prosecutor's office had lodged an appeal against this, the minister said.

The suspect is a German citizen who was born in Germany in 2005 and is of Lebanese origin, with a mother who was naturalized in Germany in 2002.

Dobrindt said a “major deployment of forces” had been ordered, with additional police deployed not only to Berlin, but also at railway stations and airports throughout Germany, as well as at borders. 

One killed in van ramming and machete attack 

Police earlier said a white van struck several people near the Pride event in the Tiergarten park at around 10 pm (2000 GMT) on Saturday, prompting organizers to call off the celebrations and evacuate the area. 

Police spokesman Florian Nath said the victim killed was a woman who suffered fatal injuries at the scene.

The vehicle crashed into a tree and the suspect fled, police said. Officers no longer believed he was in the area and said he was likely elsewhere in Berlin. 

Police also carried out several operations linked to the investigation, including a search of an apartment in the Berlin district of Schöneberg. No arrest was made as no one was found at the property, Nath told dpa.

A wanted notice from the Berlin Public Prosecutor's Office and the State Criminal Police Office released early on Sunday included a photograph of the suspect, who is described as slim and approximately 1.90 metres tall.

According to witness accounts, several people may have suffered stab wounds, while some said they had seen a man dressed in black carrying a machete.

Fire brigade spokesman Dominik Pretz said three of the injured people suffered life-threatening injuries and eight were seriously injured. Those with life-threatening and serious injuries were all taken to hospital.

Hundreds of thousands at parade

Hundreds of thousands of people had gathered in the German capital to join the Pride march, one of the largest events for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and wider queer community (LGBTIQ+) in Europe.

The event is known as CSD in Germany, named after Christopher Street in New York, where riots outside the Stonewall Inn in 1969 sparked the global gay rights movement.

The parade wound its way through central Berlin with more than 80 floats before ending in the Tiergarten, with the main stage held outside the Brandenburg Gate. Organizers said the march was intended to send a message of democracy, tolerance and diversity. 

More than 2,200 police officers had been deployed in Berlin since Saturday morning, some heavily armed, according to Nath.