BERLIN (AP) — A van ramming and stabbing near Berlin’s Pride festival that left one person dead and many others injured is believed to have been an Islamic extremist terror attack, Germany’s interior minister said Sunday.

The suspect in Saturday night’s attack remains at large. Authorities issued a wanted notice and warned people against approaching Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, saying that he may be armed and dangerous.

Authorities said he is believed to have injured several people after he drove a van into a crowd at a park near the Pride festival’s closing party. He then allegedly attacked other people with a weapon, suspected to be a machete.

“Everything we see here points to us dealing with an Islamic terror attack,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said.

Dobrindt put the total number of injured at 29.

German authorities have issued a wanted notice for Ballout, warning the public to avoid “direct contact” with the suspect and saying that he may be armed and dangerous.

Suspect allegedly has ties to Islamic extremism
Police had said earlier that they had identified a suspect who has ties to Islamic groups in the German capital.

Dobrindt said the suspect had come to authorities’ attention in the past because of numerous previous crimes, of which he didn’t give details, and also because of “radicalization and belonging to the Islamist scene.”

He said Ballout was born in Germany, and that his mother was naturalized in 2002 — three years before he was born.

Dobrindt said the suspect had been convicted in Berlin in the past, though he didn’t specify for what. He said that he had been given a suspended sentence of 1 year and 10 months.

Police conducted operations in the city as they searched for the suspect. Those included a search at an apartment in Berlin’s Schöneberg district in the early hours of Sunday, but police said they found no one there.

Berlin’s Pride festival is one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ celebrations
According to police, a white van drove into the Tiergarten park around 10 p.m. and hit several people before colliding with a tree. The closing party at the Pride festival, known as Christopher Street Day, was ongoing at the time next to the Brandenburg Gate, a short distance away, following a parade with some 80 trucks that had made its way through downtown Berlin earlier in the day.

Dobrindt noted that the crime scene was several hundred meters from the Pride festival itself, so the people affected would either have been in the Tiergarten park or on their way to or from the festival.

Police said a woman was killed. Berlin’s fire service said that three people sustained life-threatening injuries and another eight were seriously injured.

The Pride event next to the Brandenburg Gate was called off around 10:15 p.m. and a band’s performance on stage was interrupted. People were urged to go home and to avoid taking the route through the park.

Earlier Saturday, “Berlin celebrated a great day. Berlin was colorful. Berlin showed how diverse, how open this city is. It showed once again that Berlin is the city of freedom,” Mayor Kai Wegner said on Sunday. “After 10 p.m., it got dark. Very dark.”

One of the presenters at the Pride party, Ricarda Hofmann, wrote in an Instagram post that she had been there “not just as a moderator, but as part of a community that comes together to be visible. To celebrate love. To stand up for each other.”

She said the attack left her speechless. “What happened today has changed something in me,” she wrote.

Hundreds of thousands of people had come to Berlin to celebrate on Saturday, though it’s unclear how many were still at the festival by late evening. It’s one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ celebrations.

The van, with its battered front resting against a tree, could still be seen at the scene Sunday morning.

Amsterdam says it will celebrate freedom in the wake of Berlin attack
Chancellor Friedrich Merz described what happened as “an attack on our society.”

“What an abhorrent act in Berlin,” Merz wrote in a post on X. He added that Germany loves freedom, “and we will preserve and defend that.”

Dobrindt said he expected security measures at other major events in Germany, including Pride events elsewhere, to be reviewed and if necessary significantly strengthened.

He pointed to concern about possible copycat crimes, adding that “this is not typical of such situations, but it also can’t be ruled out.”

In the neighboring Netherlands, Amsterdam is hosting World Pride this week and next alongside its own annual Pride celebrations. Mayor Femke Halsema said authorities and organizers “are closely monitoring the security situation” after the Berlin attack.

She said security is always high for such events and extra measures will be added where necessary, “which visitors will hopefully notice as little as possible. Because we don’t want to be scared and we want to be able to celebrate freedom and being able to be who you are and love who you want to.”