An attack on one of Europe's largest LGBTQ+ celebrations has ended with the suspect dead and German officials describing it as terrorism, ABC7 reports.
What happened
During Berlin's Christopher Street Day, the German name for its Pride celebrations, a man drove a vehicle into a crowd near the parade route by the city's Tiergarten park, then got out and attacked people with a bladed weapon believed to be a machete. One person was killed. The number of injured rose as the picture clarified, from an initial 17 to 29, several of them with serious or life-threatening wounds.
The combination, a vehicle used as a weapon followed by a knife attack, is one European security services have warned about for years, and it turned a festival into a mass-casualty scene.
The suspect, and how it ended
Police initially searched for the attacker before locating him on Sunday, in an allotment garden area of the Spandau district. According to Berlin police, "he reportedly ran toward our officers with a stabbing weapon, prompting our SEK Berlin unit to open fire." He died at the scene despite attempts to resuscitate him.
Authorities identified him as a 21-year-old man, named under Germany's privacy conventions only as Abdul B., a German citizen of Lebanese descent who was born in Germany. Officials said he had an extensive criminal record, including a prior sentence, and had shown signs of radicalization and links to radical Islamist circles.
What officials are saying, and the care it requires
German leaders were direct about how they read the attack. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said, "Everything we are seeing here indicates that this was an Islamist terrorist attack," and Chancellor Friedrich Merz called it a "heinous act" against society.
Two things are worth holding together here. The characterization of motive is the German government's, stated by named officials, and it is early; a formal investigation into intent and any wider network is what will ultimately establish the full picture, and we are reporting the officials' assessment as their assessment. What is not in doubt is the toll and the target: an assault that killed one person and wounded 29 struck a Pride event specifically, an occasion that exists to assert the safety and visibility of LGBTQ+ people. An attack on it carries that meaning regardless of the attacker's precise ideology.
Why it reaches Los Angeles
Los Angeles has one of the largest LGBTQ+ communities in the United States and its own long tradition of Pride, and violence aimed at such a gathering anywhere is felt by such communities everywhere. The Herald reports the confirmed facts, one dead, 29 hurt, the suspect killed by police, and attributes the terrorism designation to the German officials who made it, while the investigation into how and why continues.
