Van Rams Crowd Near Berlin Pride, Killing One and Injuring 16, Police Search for Suspects

A white van drove into a crowd in Berlin's Tiergarten park Saturday night, killing one person and injuring at least 16 others, according to police and a Berlin fire department spokesperson, Dominik Pretz. Several of the injured have life-threatening wounds, police said.

The crash happened shortly before 10 p.m. local time, close to the route Berlin's Christopher Street Day pride march had taken earlier in the day, according to police accounts relayed by the Associated Press and reported by the Guardian. The van struck several people on a walking path before colliding with a tree.

Police have not identified a suspect or a motive. Berlin police spokesperson Alexander Klute told the Associated Press: "At this point, we don't know anything about any possible motives, the identity of the perpetrator or the perpetrators, or anything of that nature." Officer Florian Nath said in a video posted to the Berlin police account on X that authorities were "conducting an intensive search for possible suspects."

Police told Agence France-Presse, as reported by the Guardian, that they later found the vehicle believed to be involved abandoned in the park. No arrest has been announced as of this writing.

Event organizers cut short the celebration immediately. A message posted to the parade's Instagram account, in English and German, read: "Event cancelled" and "Please leave the venue calmly and orderly." A concert underway near the Brandenburg Gate was interrupted around 10:15 p.m., and attendees were told to avoid the route through Tiergarten.

Emergency crews, including Berlin firefighters, set up a helicopter landing zone near the Reichstag to transport the injured to hospitals, according to the Guardian. Police said it was "definitely a lot of police" responding, though they did not give an exact officer count.

Hundreds of thousands of people had turned out earlier Saturday for the parade, one of Europe's largest LGBTQ+ celebrations, known in Germany as Christopher Street Day. Roughly 80 floats took part before the attack, and attendees had spent hours marching, dancing and celebrating in what the India Today and 1News accounts both described as a peaceful atmosphere up until the crash.

Julian Miethig, who had attended the earlier festivities near the Brandenburg Gate, told reporters he learned something was wrong when a friend described "a lot of fire trucks, a lot of emergency vehicles, ambulances" near the park. He went to Tiergarten and said he was shaken by what he saw. "It's a dark day for the community," he said, according to 1News.

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner called the incident "an attack on our free and cosmopolitan society" and said security authorities would investigate "with the utmost urgency." "Following a peaceful and colourful CSD, the rally for a tolerant and peaceful Berlin was attacked in the most brutal manner," Wegner said on X, as quoted by the Guardian. "Berlin is the city of freedom, and our freedom has today been attacked in the most appalling way."

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed that whoever is responsible will be punished, according to the Guardian's reporting. Neither Merz's office nor police have released details tying the attack to any specific ideology, grievance or organization, and no charges have been filed.

The attack lands at a tense moment for Germany, which has seen a string of vehicle and knife attacks in recent years, a pattern the Guardian's coverage explicitly ties this incident to, though no direct link between this crash and prior attacks has been established by authorities.