An overnight manhunt for the attacker who killed a woman and injured several others at a Berlin gay Pride celebration stretched into midday Sunday with no resolution in sight, as the authorities asked the public to help find a young man they said had ties to Islamic extremist groups.
Berlin police said they were searching for “at least one suspect” after the attack on the annual Christopher Street Day parade, which drew hundreds of thousands of revelers to Berlin’s city center on Saturday. The festivities included a concert on Saturday evening near the Brandenburg Gate and the Tiergarten, the city’s large central park.
Shortly after 10 p.m., the authorities said, a white minivan sped through a side street leading out of the park, eventually crashing into a tree. The driver ran away. Video footage showed the car’s front grill smashed and its body heavily dented.
At least 16 people were left injured, some critically, after the attack. The police said some had suffered stab wounds. Local officials said they would release more information at a news conference Sunday afternoon.
Early Sunday morning, the police released a photograph and a partial name of a suspected attacker, in an appeal for public help in locating the man, Abdul B., 21. His full surname was withheld under German privacy laws.
The police said he was known to them and was associated with what they called “the Islamist spectrum.” They said they were investigating the attack as an act of terrorism.
Several German media outlets reported that the suspect was born in Germany and held a German passport, and that he had a migration background from Lebanon.
The police would not immediately confirm those reports. Nor did they say if the man had links to any foreign actors.
In recent months, as the United States and Israel have engaged in war against Iran, German intelligence officials have privately warned of the threat of Tehran-sponsored attacks on German soil.
Police and media reports suggested the search for the suspect had sprawled across Berlin and out to Germany’s borders, with the authorities running down multiple leads. Several outlets reported that officers searched an apartment in a neighborhood less than a mile from the Tiergarten, where the suspect was said to live with his mother, but that they did not find him there.
The attack abruptly ended a celebration that drew hundreds of thousands of revelers to Berlin, with organizers canceling a final slate of planned events on Sunday morning.
It rattled a community that had spent much of the day dancing in colorful costumes under idyllic summer skies.
It also immediately reignited a debate in Germany about migration, religious extremism and public safety. It came months before Berlin and two other eastern states are set to hold closely watched regional elections, where polls already have suggested far-right parties are poised to make gains, partly on the basis of Germans’ anxieties over public violence.
“This is an attack on our society,” Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany wrote on X early Sunday morning. “The crime will be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” he added.
Kai Wegner, Berlin’s mayor, said in a news release that “after a peaceful and vibrant Christopher Street Day, the gathering for a tolerant and peaceful Berlin was brutally attacked. Berlin is the city of freedom — and our freedom has been horribly attacked today.”
The event, named for the New York City street known for its association with the Stonewall riots that sparked the modern gay rights movement, draws hundreds of thousands of people to Berlin each year.
Early Sunday, roads near the site of the suspected attack were blocked off by a heavy police presence. Nearby, emergency personnel had erected a tent to take care of distraught witnesses. Some were seen hugging each other, and some had thermal blankets wrapped around them.
Hours earlier, barricades had blocked vehicle traffic on roads leading through the Tiergarten, while throngs of revelers, many wearing glittery, colorful outfits, danced to the throbbing sounds of techno music, spilling into cafes and beer gardens nearby. The barricades were, in many places, large and fence-like, and it was unclear how a car could have driven past or through them.
By late evening, the sounds of celebration had given way to the blare of sirens and the drone of helicopters circling over the area.
Pranav Baskar contributed reporting. Verena Hölzl contributed from Berlin.
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