[AP]
[AP]

The suspect in a vehicle attack that killed one person and injured 29 others at a Pride festival in Berlin was shot dead by police a day after the assault. German authorities have classified the incident as an act of Islamist extremism and are continuing their investigation.

Berlin police said the suspect, Abdul Balut, 21, was shot and killed Sunday at around 6 p.m. local time during a special operations unit's apprehension effort at an allotment garden complex in Spandau, in northwestern Berlin.

Police said Balut charged at officers while armed with a bladed weapon, prompting them to open fire. Firefighters on the scene performed CPR, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Balut was suspected of driving a white Citroën van into a crowd near Tiergarten park in central Berlin on Sunday at around 10 p.m., killing one person and injuring 29 others.

Investigators believe that after the vehicle came to a stop upon hitting a wooden post, Balut got out and continued attacking bystanders with what appeared to be a machete.

The attack occurred near the route of the Christopher Street Day (CSD) Pride parade, which drew hundreds of thousands of participants. A closing concert for the festival was underway at the Brandenburg Gate, about 500 meters away, at the time.

Police also arrested an Iranian national who had been in the vehicle in the early hours of Sunday. It has not yet been confirmed who was driving at the time of the attack.

German authorities determined the incident to be an act of Islamist extremist terrorism and referred the case to federal prosecutors.

Balut, a German national of Lebanese descent, had previously been caught attempting to travel to Syria last year to join the Islamic State (IS) militant group. He was subsequently imprisoned for three months in Lebanon on charges of inciting religious conflict. After his release in October last year, he was arrested again upon entering Germany in November of the same year.

Berlin's Tiergarten district court sentenced him in May to one year and 10 months in prison, suspended, on charges including preparing acts of violence threatening national security, and released him on the condition that he complete 26 sessions of extremism prevention counseling.

Security authorities continued to monitor him afterward, classifying him as a violent extremist threat and placing him under surveillance including wiretapping. He had posted IS propaganda on social media in 2024, and after his release uploaded firearms-related images, leading to a search and seizure operation on July 3.

According to Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, there were 9,110 violent Islamist extremists in Germany as of last year, including 1,940 in Berlin alone. IS has used German-language propaganda channels to repeatedly incite vehicle-ramming attacks targeting crowds in Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt.

Germany has seen a series of major vehicle attacks in recent years. In 2016, a Tunisian IS follower drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people. Last December, a vehicle-ramming attack at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, killed six people. The string of major attacks has intensified calls for Germany to strengthen its response to extremism and improve security measures at public events.


rainbow@heraldcorp.com