Berlin Pride attack: ISIS-linked suspect shot dead in police operations

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.

"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," Berlin police said.


Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt had told reporters at the scene of the attack that "everything we see here indicates that we are dealing with an Islamist terrorist attack".

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The suspect had "attracted attention in the past through a high number of criminal offences, through radicalisation, through membership of the Islamist scene", Dobrindt said, adding that the attacker was born in Germany in 2005.

Ballout traveled to Lebanon in 2025 with the goal of going to Syria to join the Islamic State group, Berlin prosecutors said Sunday.

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There, he made contact with several people who were presumed members of the militant group - or at least he believed them to be, prosecutors said. 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. Security sources told Reuters the suspect had been released from juvenile detention only two months ago.

After mowing people down with the vehicle, the attacker injured some with a bladed weapon, thought to have been a machete, Dobrindt said.