Automobile of Peace Attack on Berlin Pride Parade Claims One Life and Injures Dozens

A van was driven into a Berlin Pride crowd, killing one and injuring 29. The suspect – an Islamist recently released on licence – was shot dead by police. Chancellor Merz blamed "offensive jokes", says Eugyppius.

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On Saturday evening at around 10pm, a man drove a white Citröen Space Tourer delivery van from Lennéstraße into the Tiergarten in Berlin – accelerating through a crowd gathered for the closing rally of Christopher Street Day. One woman died at the scene and 29 were injured, three of them critically. The van ultimately struck a tree, at which point its occupant fled, attacking bystanders with a machete. The CSD rally at the Brandenburger Tor was dispersed minutes later at around 10:15.

German police spent most of the following day conducting an ever-widening manhunt for their prime suspect: a 21 year-old German citizen and Berlin resident of Lebanese descent named Abdul Ballout.

Ballout had rented the van from its private owner and his mobile telephone was found inside it. Masked SEK officers raided Ballout’s apartment in Tiergarten/Schöneberg, but he was not present. Officers also searched his sister’s apartment in Neukölln/Treptow, again without success. Then at around 6pm, another SEK unit found Ballout’s hideout in a garden allotment in Berlin-Spandau. Officers shot Ballout dead after he lunged at them with a bladed weapon.

Ballout was born in Germany to a naturalised Lebanese mother and had been known to security services since he was a teenager. They had classified him as an Islamist Gefährder, or a clear threat. His previous criminal convictions include assault and robbery. Most recently, he attempted to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State, but was detained following a tip-off from German authorities in Lebanon, where he spent three months in custody. He was subsequently returned to the Federal Republic and held pending trial for “preparing a serious violent offence endangering the state“. The Tiergarten Magistrates’ Court found Ballout guilty and sentenced him in May 2026 to a year and 10 months imprisonment. Yet he was reportedly granted ‘conditional release’ on the condition that he attend a deradicalisation programme operated by the “Violence Prevention Network“. Ballout met with the deradicalisers twice, in June and July; they found him evasive and insincere. His third meeting was scheduled for the Monday following the attack.

Police had apparently kept Ballout under intermittent surveillance in the months since his conviction. Some weeks earlier he had posted a picture to social media featuring a gun. Officers raided his apartment but found only a toy weapon.

Some early reports and witness statements suggested there may have been two perpetrators, but police do not appear to be searching for any other suspects. By all accounts Ballout appears to have acted alone.

On Sunday afternoon, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz addressed the attack in a eulogy at the St.-Marien-Kirche on Alexanderplatz. He mentioned neither Islam nor mass migration, insisting instead that “intolerance, exclusion, discrimination, rude language and offensive jokes” had played a part in Ballout’s violence.

This article originally appeared on Eugyppius’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.

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Jeff Chambers
Jeff Chambers
3 days ago

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz addressed the attack in a eulogy at the St.-Marien-Kirche on Alexanderplatz. He mentioned neither Islam nor mass migration, insisting instead that “intolerance, exclusion, discrimination, rude language and offensive jokes” had played a part in Ballout’s violence.

So, Merz, the globalist oaf who is in the grip of a death-wish, is now claiming in all seriousness that the Koranic injunction “Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them” had nothing to do with the carnage. Instead Merz would have us believe that the people responsible for the carnage are not the Islamists, but the wicked whities – i.e. the German people. Merz is a breathtakingly vile creature.

transmissionofflame
3 days ago
Reply to  Jeff Chambers

The parade organisers said they “rejected violence in all forms” which seemed to me to be a pop at the “far right”.

Jeff Chambers
Jeff Chambers
3 days ago

But they seem unable to understand that violence is not rejecting them.

Mogwai
3 days ago

I’m glad the cops killed him, though, because he wouldn’t have got sufficient punishment through the German judicial system. In lieu of capital punishment this is the next best thing and seems karmic to me. The poor woman he killed was a 65yr old lady from Poland, visiting with her daughter. This from an ex-Muslim; ”The ideology behind Islamic terrorism: If you raise a child in an environment that teaches hostility toward non-Muslims, glorifies violence in the name of Jihad, divides the world into believers and enemies, promotes religious supremacy, and constantly reinforces those ideas through preachers, media, schools, and social circles, then don’t pretend to be shocked when some people eventually pick up knives, drive vehicles into crowds, build bombs, or open fire on those they have been taught to see as their enemies. Ideas have consequences. Violence does not appear out of thin air. It grows where it is cultivated. The real scandal is not asking whether an ideology contributes to radicalization, it’s refusing to ask the question at all. Anyone who instinctively defends an ideology instead of honestly examining its role in producing terrorists is helping shield the problem from scrutiny and making meaningful reform harder. And… Read more »

RTSC
RTSC
2 days ago

Merz, like every British PM since Blair, doesn’t DARE admit the true cause of the violence or the real objectives of the Islamist perpetrators who carry out terrorist attacks in western Europe.

They deliberately imported the problem and let them loose in our tolerant and formerly High Trust and cohesive societies, which were based on Judeo-Christian values and are anathema to extremist Muslims.

They will blame anyone and anything EXCEPT Muslims and themselves. They, on behalf of the Globalists, have destroyed western Europe in the space of one lifetime – and it cannot be restored.

In a decade or so, the whole of western Europe will resemble Lebanon as it collapsed into sectarian civil war.

WillP
2 days ago

The gaslighting continues. Apparently men who vote for Reform did this.

WillP
2 days ago

I want to know if the usual collection of Palestine flags and keffiyehs were on display.

ChrisA
ChrisA
2 days ago

Probably shot so he couldn’t go to court and let the Islamist cat out of the horses mouth, if you will pardon my combination.

Hound of Heaven
Hound of Heaven
2 days ago

The Germans are finding out that Islam doesn’t just object to Israel.

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