Vehicle-ramming and machete attack near the Berlin Christopher Street Day

On the evening of 25 July 2026, at around 22:00, a 21-year-old man drove a white van along footpaths through the Großer Tiergarten in Berlin, about 400 metres from the Christopher Street Day site, striking a number of people before the vehicle hit a tree. According to the Polizei Berlin he then attacked passers-by with a bladed weapon and fled. A 65-year-old woman was killed and around 30 people were injured, several of them life-threateningly.

On the evening of 26 July special police units located the suspect in an allotment colony in Spandau. Police said he attacked the officers with a bladed weapon, that they opened fire and that he died of his injuries. The Federal Prosecutor General took over the case as Islamist-motivated terrorism. Investigators recovered a phone left in the vehicle that held a video containing a pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State and a claim of the attack.

According to Tagesschau the suspect was a German citizen born in Berlin to a family of Lebanese origin. He had been known to domestic intelligence as an Islamist since the age of 16, was classified as a Gefährder in November 2025 and had been convicted in May 2026 of preparing a serious act of violence before being released.

Attribution to Islamist terrorism rests on the video recovered by investigators and on the federal prosecutor assuming the case, which in Germany marks terrorism of particular significance. Nothing published so far shows that an Islamic State structure directed or commissioned the attack, so the assessment is inspired rather than directed. Because the suspect died before trial, the account remains an investigative one. Casualty figures differed between early and later reporting, and the release of a man classified as a Gefährder weeks before the attack has become the focus of political scrutiny.