A vehicle drove into a group of people in Berlin's Tiergarten park late on Saturday, near the route of the city's Christopher Street Day celebrations, killing one person and injuring at least 16 others.
The vehicle struck the group at around 10 p.m. local time before crashing into a tree, according to initial police accounts. Several of the injured were reported to be in a serious or life-threatening condition. Police called off the parade and an accompanying concert hours after the celebrations had begun.
Hundreds of thousands of people had gathered in Berlin on Saturday for Christopher Street Day, one of the largest LGBTQ+ events in Europe.
What police have said
Berlin police said they had identified a suspect who had not been arrested, and that a search was underway.
A police spokesman, Florian Nath, said the suspect "is known to us as a member of Islamic circles here in Berlin, and our search for this person is proceeding at full speed."
Nath also said, in the same remarks, that investigators have "no information whatsoever regarding his specific motives, the exact sequence of events, or his role in the crime itself."
Earlier, another police spokesperson, Alexander Klute, told The Associated Press: "At this point, we don't know anything about possible motives, the identity of the perpetrator or the perpetrators, or anything of that nature."
What is not known
It is worth being explicit about the size of that gap, because it is where most of the commentary over the next day will go.
Police have not said the vehicle was driven into the crowd deliberately. They have not said the Christopher Street Day event was targeted. They have not established a motive, and they have said so directly and more than once.
Casualty figures have also moved through the evening — outlets have reported 14, 15, 16 and 17 injured at different points as police updated their accounts. The figures in this article reflect what had been confirmed at the time of writing and are likely to change.
An incident at a Pride event invites an obvious inference. That inference may turn out to be correct. It has not been established by anyone investigating it, and treating it as settled tonight would be a claim about a killing that no one is yet in a position to make.
The event itself
Christopher Street Day takes its name from the street in New York's Greenwich Village where the Stonewall uprising began in 1969. Germany's celebrations carry the name nationwide, and Berlin's is among the largest anywhere in Europe.
The parade had been running for several hours before it was called off.
This is a developing story. Details, casualty figures and official accounts are subject to change as police release further information.
