BERLIN — A driver rammed a white van into revelers gathered for Berlin's Christopher Street Day Pride celebration in Tiergarten park Saturday night, killing one woman and injuring 16 others and prompting a citywide manhunt for a 21-year-old suspect that Berlin police described as tied to the German capital's Islamist scene.

The attack, which unfolded shortly after 10 p.m. along a wooded footpath in central Berlin, cut short one of Europe's largest LGBTQ+ gatherings and drew rapid condemnation from Chancellor Friedrich Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. It landed as Amsterdam prepared to open World Pride this week, prompting Dutch authorities to review security for the hundreds of thousands of participants expected there.

The suspect

Berlin police and prosecutors on Sunday issued a wanted notice for the man they identified as Abdul B., withholding his surname under German law that shields suspects at this stage. Police spokesman Florian Nath said the man had been on the department's radar before Saturday.

"The suspect is known to police. He is known to us as a member of Islamic circles here in Berlin, and our search for this person is proceeding at full speed," Nath told reporters.

The BBC, citing German media, reported that Abdul B. is a supporter of Islamic State who unsuccessfully tried to join the group, traveled to Lebanon in 2025, and remained in pretrial detention on his return to Berlin until May of this year, when he was ordered into a deradicalization program. Police warned the public against approaching the suspect, calling him potentially armed and dangerous, and cautioned that one or more accomplices may have fled the van, which was found crashed against a tree. Nath said investigators had "no information whatsoever" about the driver's specific motive.

What happened at Tiergarten

The van entered Tiergarten around 10 p.m., striking pedestrians on the Ahornsteig footpath before colliding with the tree, Berlin police said. Some victims also sustained stab wounds, Nath said, and investigators were still piecing together whether more than one attacker was involved. Berlin's fire service said three of the injured were in life-threatening condition, eight were seriously hurt and five had minor injuries.

The closing concert at the Brandenburg Gate, a short distance away, was halted at 10:15 p.m., with the word "Evacuation" projected on the stage screen. Roughly 80 floats had wound through the German capital earlier in the day, drawing hundreds of thousands of participants. More than 2,200 officers had been deployed for the event, according to Deutsche Welle, with reinforcements arriving from Hamburg and other federal states overnight.

Political response

Merz, in a post on X, called the ramming "an attack on our society" and said he and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt would ensure "this horrific act is fully investigated and punished." Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner, who visited the scene, said the "rally for a tolerant and peaceful Berlin was attacked in the most brutal manner" and pledged, "We will not allow our way of life and our way of living together to be taken from us."

Von der Leyen said the CSD parade stood for "freedom, dignity, and equality - the fundamental values of the EU." In Amsterdam, Mayor Femke Halsema said organizers were "closely monitoring the security situation" and would add measures where necessary.

An unsettled record

Berlin authorities have not labeled the ramming a terrorist attack pending investigation, and Nath emphasized that officers still had no confirmed motive. Deutsche Welle noted that Germany's recent vehicle rammings have involved sharply divergent perpetrators: the December 2024 Magdeburg Christmas-market driver, who killed six, was a Saudi-born atheist with anti-Islamic and far-right beliefs, and a Leipzig driver who killed two earlier this year was a German national remanded to a psychiatric hospital.

Prosecutors said the manhunt would continue across Berlin, with the wanted notice describing Abdul B. as roughly 1.9 meters tall, thin, and last seen in a black hooded top and white trousers. Amsterdam's World Pride events run through next weekend.