BERLIN — German police said a 21-year-old man with a record of Islamist extremist activity was shot and killed Sunday, a day after he allegedly drove a minivan into people near Berlin's Pride celebrations, killing one person.
The ramming attack happened in the Tiergarten park near the Brandenburg Gate about 10 p.m. on Saturday, not far from one of Europe's biggest annual LGBTQ celebrations, Christopher Street Day.
Authorities said in addition to the one fatality, 29 people were injured, some by a bladed weapon the attacker wielded.
The vehicle that crashed into a crowd near Berlin's annual Christopher Street Day Pride parade the previous evening is removed from the scene Sunday in Berlin, Germany.
"Around 6 p.m., the suspect involved in yesterday's attack in Tiergarten was located at an allotment garden complex in Spandau," Berlin police wrote on social media, referring to an area in Berlin's westernmost borough where residents cultivate garden plots.
"According to initial findings, he ran towards officers while armed with a bladed weapon; police … subsequently opened fire,” police wrote. “Despite immediate resuscitation efforts by the Berlin Fire Department, he died at the scene."
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Dagmar Euent and Juliane Gotzler, who have a garden plot, said they heard several shots and police told them to stay inside their garden hut.
Police search the area Sunday after a deadly incident in which a vehicle crashed into a crowd near the annual Christopher Street Day Pride parade the previous evening in Berlin, Germany.
Merz calls for defense of freedom
Earlier, Germany launched a national manhunt for the suspect. Berlin police identified the suspect as Abdul B., 21, and published his picture, asking the public for information on his whereabouts.
The suspect "attracted attention in the past through a high number of criminal offenses, through radicalisation, through membership of the Islamist scene," Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said earlier in the day, adding the suspect was a German citizen of Lebanese heritage who was born in Germany in 2005.
"Everything we see here indicates that we are dealing with an Islamist terrorist attack," Dobrindt told reporters at the scene, where he said the van drove down pavement, running over pedestrians.
Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner, standing next to Dobrindt, said the incident was "probably an Islamist terrorist attack on our way of living alongside one another, on our liberal democracy, our openness and our freedom."
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and Mayor of Berlin Kai Wegner arrive Sunday to hold a news conference in Berlin, Germany.
The Tiergarten attack was the latest in a series of vehicle attacks on crowds in Germany in recent years that intensified debate around security and immigration amid a surge in support for the far-right.
Ahead of a memorial service at St Mary's Church in Berlin, center-right Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed consequences and urged Germans not to be intimidated, affirming the country would stand united in defense of its freedom.
"We will defend the freedom, openness, and liberal spirit of our lives and our society with everything we can do," he said.
Thousands of people, some carrying the LGBT rainbow flag, attended a vigil at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. Some carried placards with slogans such as "Hatred kills," while others cried and hugged each other.
At the Tiergarten park, people lit candles and left flowers.
People gather Sunday at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, after a deadly incident in which a vehicle crashed into a crowd the prior evening.
Calls for action
There were calls across the political spectrum for Germany to tighten laws and crack down on Islamic radicalism.
Green politician and Bundestag Vice President Omid Nouripour wrote on social media that Germany must stand against "murderous Islamism."
Daniel Peters, a regional leader of the center-right CDU, said in a social media post that Islamic State "supporters must not walk free in Germany."
Police officers secure the area at an allotment garden complex Sunday in the Berlin suburb of Spandau, Germany, after a known Islamist, suspected of ramming a minivan into a crowd the prior night, was shot and killed in a police operation.
Security sources told Reuters the suspect was released from juvenile detention only two months earlier.
Asked about reports that he received a suspended sentence, Dobrindt told broadcaster ZDF, "It would certainly have been advisable to place this individual in custody."
The security sources said he was known to domestic intelligence and was among the hundreds of people classed as potentially dangerous, a label that usually leads to scrutiny or monitoring.
Authorities said the suspect previously was convicted of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz gives a statement Sunday in Berlin after a deadly incident in which a vehicle crashed into a crowd the previous night.
Merz under pressure
The attack comes at a sensitive time for Merz's unpopular coalition government, which is going through a bruising cabinet reshuffle as critics accuse it of being ineffective.
State elections take place in two months, with the far-right opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD) campaigning on issues including immigration and security in a bid to secure control of a regional government for the first time.
The AfD was quick to comment on the attack.
"We will not allow religious extremists to divide our country with violence and intolerance!" AfD co-chief Tino Chrupalla said on social media.
In May, a man believed to have mental health problems drove into a pedestrian zone in Leipzig, killing two people and seriously injuring three.
In 2016, Anis Amri, a Tunisian with links to Islamist militants whose asylum application was rejected, hijacked a truck, killed its driver and drove it into a busy Christmas market, killing 11 people and injuring dozens. He was shot dead by police in Italy four days later.
