Suspect in Berlin Pride ramming attack shot and killed by police, authorities say

The suspect sought in connection with a car ramming attack on a Berlin LGBTQ+ Pride parade that left one person dead and 29 injured was shot and killed in a confrontation with police, a senior police official in Germany told CBS News. Authorities believe he may have been motivated by Islamist extremist ideology and sought to join the Islamic State group.

The official said the suspect charged towards police with a knife and police opened fire, shooting the suspect. The Associated Press, citing police, said the confrontation happened Sunday in a suburb of the city.

Germany’s interior minister identified the suspect as 21-year-old Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots. Police described him as being part of Berlin’s “Islamist scene” and someone who is known to authorities.

“Everything we see here points to us dealing with an Islamic terror attack,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said Sunday.

Dobrindt said Ballout was born in Germany and that his mother was naturalized in 2002, three years before he was born. He said the suspect had been convicted in Berlin in the past.

Berlin prosecutors said Ballout shared ISIS propaganda on Instagram in 2024 and the following year traveled to Lebanon “with the intention of proceeding from there to Syria to join ISIS.” However, he was arrested and sentenced to three months in prison. He returned to Germany in November 2025 and he was arrested in May for “preparing a serious act of subversive violence,” prosecutors said.

He was sentenced to a year and ten months in jail, but this was suspended, partially in recognition of the time he had spent in jail in Lebanon and pre-trial detention, and partially because he admitted to the crimes and distanced himself from ISIS, prosecutors said.

Police said they believe Ballout rented the vehicle used in the attack but it is unclear if he was the driver. He was described as being of slim build, about 6 feet 3 inches tall, with black hair and wearing a black hoodie with white pants.

Police searched an apartment in Berlin’s Schöneberg district early Sunday, but said they found no one there. The suspect’s heavily damaged vehicle remained at the site of the attack on Sunday morning. 

Authorities are also working to determine if he acted alone. Investigators believe that one or more people may have left the vehicle after it came to a stop. Some victims also suffered stab wounds, raising the possibility that others were involved in the attack, but authorities have not confirmed that. Dobrindt said the suspect is believed to have injured people with a machete.

A man with Iranian citizenship was arrested after the attack, but police have not confirmed any involvement in the attack, the AP reported earlier Sunday.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz had vowed that law enforcement would find the suspect.

“I would like to say this to Christopher Street Day participants here in Berlin but also across Germany: Don’t let yourselves, let us not let ourselves, be intimidated,” he said Sunday. “These acts have only one purpose: They aim to divide our society. They want to take away from us the most important thing we have: Namely our openness and our freedom.”

Berlin’s fire service said that of the injured, three have life-threatening injuries, eight were seriously injured, and five had slight injuries. Police have not identified the victim who was killed. 

The attack occurred a few hundred yards from a party near the Brandenburg Gate that was supposed to close out the city’s Pride festival.

On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of mourners gathered at a memorial at the iconic gate. They hugged each other and laid down flowers, candles, rainbow flags and homemade signs, including a cardboard one that said: “the only thing more powerful than hate is love.”

“It’s a dark day for the community,” Julian Miethig, who had attended the event and been planning to go to an afterparty when he heard that “something bad happened” at the parade, told the AP.

Rise in ramming attacks 

The attack is the latest in a series that have left the country grappling with questions about public safety. 

Six people were killed and hundreds injured when a car plowed into a Christmas market in Magdeburg in December 2024. Two months later, a car drove into trade union demonstrators in Munich, killing a woman and her two-year-old daughter. Two more people were killed in March 2025 when a car rammed into a crowd in Mannheim. 

The attacks have different alleged motives, but together have kept immigration, security and extremism at the center of German politics. The debates have also fueled support for the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, and put pressure on Merz and Germany’s mainstream political parties as they try to convince voters they can keep the country safe.