A large-scale search operation is underway in the German capital after last night's deadly incident at the Berlin gay parade.
According to information from the police, released in the early hours of Sunday, a suspect has already been officially identified. Authorities confirmed that the man is well-known to law enforcement and is part of the city's radical Islamist circles.
The German news agency DPA reported that the person is directly linked to a local Islamist movement. Additional revelations by “Welt“ indicate that the same suspect was detained for another serious traffic accident in May this year. Despite the seriousness of the act at the time, he was released from juvenile detention shortly after, which now raises serious questions for local law enforcement.
The bloody incident took place shortly before 10 p.m. local time on Saturday. A white van plowed into a crowd around the famous Tiergarten park near the Brandenburg Gate at high speed. The vehicle ran over numerous pedestrians before crashing into a tree. Witnesses reported a driver who immediately after the collision jumped out of the cab and fled in an unknown direction.
The toll from the attack so far is tragic:
One dead on the spot. 17 injured, with the condition of three of them remaining critical and life-threatening. Event cancelled and hundreds of thousands of attendees evacuated.Berlin police spokesman Florian Nath confirmed to DPA that a number of operational measures were immediately taken. A search was carried out at a home in the capital's Schöneberg district, but the suspect remains at large. More than 2,200 law enforcement officers are involved in the security and search operation in Berlin, including reinforcements from Hamburg and other federal states. Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner described the incident as a “brutal attack on a free and open society“.