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BERLIN – German police said a 21-year-old man with a record of Islamist extremist activity was shot dead on Sunday, a day after he allegedly drove a minivan into people near Berlin’s Pride celebrations, killing one person.
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The ramming attack happened in the Tiergarten park near the Brandenburg Gate at about 10 p.m. (2000 GMT) on Saturday, not far from one of Europe’s biggest annual LGBTQ celebrations, Christopher Street Day.
Authorities said that in addition to the one fatality, 29 people were injured, some by a bladed weapon the attacker wielded.
“Around 6 p.m. (1600 GMT), the suspect involved in yesterday’s attack in Tiergarten was located at an allotment garden complex in Spandau,” Berlin police wrote on X, 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. Despite immediate resuscitation efforts by the Berlin Fire Department, he died at the scene.”
Dagmar Euent and Juliane Gotzler, who have a garden plot, said they heard several shots and were told to stay inside their garden hut by police.
MERZ CALLS FOR DEFENCE OF FREEDOM
Berlin police had identified the suspect as Abdul B, 21, and published his picture, asking the public for information on his whereabouts.
The suspect had “attracted attention in the past through a high number of criminal offences, through radicalisation, through membership of the Islamist scene,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said earlier on Sunday, adding that the suspect was a German citizen of Lebanese heritage, born in Germany in 2005.
The Tiergarten attack was the latest in a series of vehicle attacks on crowds in Germany in recent years that have 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, centre-right Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed consequences and urged Germans not to be intimidated, affirming the country would stand united in defence 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.
CALLS FOR ACTION
There were calls across the political spectrum for Germany to tighten laws and crack down on Islamic radicalism.
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Green politician and Bundestag Vice President Omid Nouripour wrote on X that Germany must stand against “murderous Islamism”.
Daniel Peters, a regional leader of the centre-right CDU, said on X that Islamic State “supporters must not walk free in Germany”.
Security sources told Reuters the suspect had been released from juvenile detention only two months ago.
Asked about reports he had 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 have said the suspect had previously been convicted of preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state.
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 X.
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.
(Reporting by Miranda Murray, Kirsti Knolle, Markus Wacket, Andreas Rinke, Kerstin Dörr and Leon Malherbe in Berlin;Writing by Francois Murphy and Alan Charlish; Editing by Helen Popper, Kevin Liffey, Ros Russell and Cynthia Osterman)
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Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.