The man suspected of driving a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride festival in an Islamist terror attack that killed one woman and injured 29 others has been shot dead by police, ending a 20-hour manhunt involving 1,000 officers.
Abdul Ballout, 21, a German citizen with Lebanese heritage, was killed on Sunday afternoon in Spandau, a western borough of Berlin, after he rushed at officers with a “bladed weapon”, police said. Emergency services tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate him at the scene. Police confirmed they are not looking for other suspects.
“Abdul Ballout, 21, shot dead by police after ramming van into Pride crowd, killing one and injuring 29.”
The attack began just before 10pm on Saturday when a white minivan drove into a crowd on Ahornsteig street in Tiergarten park, near the Brandenburg Gate and the main venue of the city’s Christopher Street Day Pride celebration. The suspect then got out and attacked passers-by with what authorities believe was a machete. One woman died and at least 29 people were injured, none critically, police later said.
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt described it as “an Islamist terrorist attack”, adding that Ballout “had previously drawn attention to himself through a high volume of criminal offences, radicalisation and affiliation with the Islamist scene”. In May 2025, prosecutors said, Ballout travelled via Turkey to Lebanon intending to join Islamic State in Syria. He was arrested in Lebanon in July 2025 and sentenced to three months for incitement. After returning to Germany in November 2025, he was held in pre-trial detention and in May this year received a suspended sentence of one year and ten months for “preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state”. He had earlier been convicted of robbery and assault.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited the attack scene on Sunday and later spoke outside a church service for victims. “These extremists have no place in our society,” he said, vowing that Germany would not allow the “poison of terrorism” to affect its society. Dobrindt said Germany’s threat level would be raised and advised federal states to review security measures for major events, warning that copycat attacks could not be ruled out, though the risk was low.
The manhunt, which involved a search of Ballout’s apartment in Schöneberg, ended when police tracked him to an allotment garden complex in Spandau, where they shot him dead after he attacked officers with a knife.
