Main suspect in Berlin Pride attack shot dead by German police

The suspect in the deadly Berlin Pride attack that left one person dead and 29 injured was shot and killed by police during a confrontation on Sunday in a suburb of the city, authorities said. Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, was killed following a search that lasted nearly 24 hours after the attack in downtown Berlin. Prosecutors said he had previously sought to join the militant Islamic State group.
Ballout was suspected of driving a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride festival Saturday night before apparently stabbing others with a machete in what authorities believe was an Islamic extremist terror attack. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the attack occurred a few hundred meters (yards) from a party near the Brandenburg Gate that was supposed to close out the city’s Pride festival.Ballout was born in Germany, the minister said. His mother was naturalized in 2002, three years before he was born.Ballout traveled to Lebanon in 2025 with the goal of going to Syria to join the Islamic State group, Berlin prosecutors said Sunday.
He was arrested in Lebanon last year and sentenced by a military court to three months’ imprisonment for offenses including incitement to religious and sectarian conflict. He returned to Germany after completing his sentence, where he was arrested at the Berlin airport. He was released from detention pending the appeal in June.
The attack on Saturday shattered what had been a day of celebration for hundreds of thousands attending Christopher Street Day (CSD), one of Europe's largest Pride events.Shortly before 10:00pm (20:00 GMT) on Saturday, a white vehicle ran into people on the southern edge of central Berlin's Tiergarten park before crashing into a tree. 
Police say that "one or more" people then left the vehicle and fled the scene.Emergency services said one woman was killed and 16 others were injured. None of those injured were at risk of succumbing to their injuries, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Sunday.
Saturday's attack revived memories of a string of similar incidents which have shaken Germany in recent years and inflamed debate on immigration, with several of the perpetrators being from outside Germany.