Police hunt suspect after car attack at Berlin Pride event

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1:17Hello, welcome to the programme. This is NewsHour from the BBC World Service. My name's Paul Henley. We're coming to you live from London. In Germany, the Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has called an attack on one of Europe's biggest pride events in Berlin, an attack on society. Police are still searching for the driver of a vehicle that rammed into a crowd last night, killing a woman and injuring 16 people. They have, however, issued a photo of the man they think was responsible and a name, Abdul B, with the German media filling in gaps already. Julian Mietich was at the parade when the attack happened.

1:54We have a beautiful quiet today and now it's a terrible situation. Yeah, it's very difficult for me. I'm shocked. Daniel Tonner-Leva was also at the event. He told the BBC what he saw. I was right in front of the main stage waiting for my favourite acts to perform when the evacuation started. Nobody knew what was happening, but as soon as they went on stage and said that, I immediately knew something really bad happened. It was really difficult because you don't know. You, of course, start to try to open your phone to open the news, but it was all so fast. There was no news about it. You just see tons of blue lights, helicopters all over the city.

2:54You don't know where to go. You don't know if you're safe. They say just leave the area, go home. But where? And like 10, 20 minutes later, the first news come in. But it was all like a lot. Our reporter Michael Steininger is in Berlin and joins me live. Michael, welcome. Can you describe exactly what happened? Well, the annual Pride Parade happens in Berlin in front of the Brandenburg Gate. It's hundreds of thousands of people, and that was the case last night as well, hundreds of thousands of people filling the main road leading up to the Brandenburg Gate, raveling, partying, dancing, singing, watching a concert happening.

3:41That main road, which leads up to the Bundaberg Gate, goes through a huge park, the Tiergarten Park. It's bigger than Hyde Park in London. And on the fringe, on the southern fringe of that park, is when at around 10 o 'clock last night, a white van ramped into a crowd of people who were either going or coming from that parade and killed one person and injured 16 others. What is the scene now following the abrupt end of the Pride event? Well, at Brandenburg Gate, the picture is as you would expect it to be after a big street fest like yesterday's. People are kind of de-rigging the stage. There's a lot of debris that's being cleared from partying, empty bottles and paper cups.

4:33But just a bit down the road, just across in the park, there's police tape, white and red. and there's this white van still crashed into a tree where it came to a halt after yesterday's attack. We quoted Friedrich Merz. What reaction has there been in Germany? Well, there's shock, there's outrage. There is already some questions coming up because we put together bit by bit the picture of who the suspected attacker is And it is known that he has sympathies with IS, that he has kind of Islamist leanings and had connections to Islamist circles. So there will be questions asked why this man was out and about and able to commit this attack, if indeed that was what happened.

5:26Michael Steininger reporting live from Berlin. Many thanks. Kai Böller is a member of the board of the German Pride Organiser Association. He was at the event in Berlin. I asked him first how things unfolded from his point of view. We get noticed that some incident was happened. No one knows exactly what it was. And then the organising team decided to end the event and to evacuate everyone. It was a huge decision to make to call off something on this scale. Yeah, but then more and more information dropped in and we knew it was a very horrible thing happened at the Tiergarten. And so it was the best decision we could make to secure all these people.

6:17And what is your reaction to what happened? I'm deeply shocked. The whole community in Germany is deeply shocked today. We all realize this morning what happened there. I mean, we heard it, we remember Orlando, we remember the things in Munich, in Magdeburg, the things in Bautzen and Leipzig two years ago, but now this happened in the heart of our nation. In the run-up to this event, the organisers were talking about a harsher social climate, more anti-gay sentiment. Tell me about that. Oh, yeah. We recognize the last two years a strong growth of anti-gay attitudes. We have this right-wing party in the parliament, the AfD, and they drove campaigns against queer people, we can talk this, and against migrants and very, very violent speech they use.

7:24and we can see that there are a lot of attacks in the digital world but also a lot of attacks in the real world. People get attacked in person over the last two years more and more. The police seem pretty clear that this was an Islamist attack. What do you make of that? Yeah, but there is nearly no difference between these right-wing attacks and Islamic attacks. They both, they are convinced that people have different worth, that there are right people and that there are false people. No different between these two ideologies. Have you got thoughts on the security at events like this? It's clearly not possible to protect everyone on their way to such an event.

8:11Yeah, it's not possible. Here are hundreds of thousands of people. You can't protect them from everything possible. If there is one human being with a will to harm people, to attack them, he will do it. And so we are all doing our best to create safer spaces. But there is no 100 % safe space possible. Does what's happened make you more determined to carry on organizing mass events like these? Are they more important? Yeah, they are more important. it's very important that we don't step back now, that we make ourselves invisible. It's important that we stand together, that we go out and that we show ourselves.

9:02Yeah, it's more important now. Even if that makes you targets? Even if that, we are targets at all. We will be targets even if we disappear in the invisible. We will be targets. So there's no difference. We have to fight against making us targets and we have to convince the civil community to protect us. Kai Böller, one of the organisers of Berlin Gay Pride. Hans-Jakob Schindler is one of Germany's most renowned experts on security. He's senior director at the Counter-Extremism Project in Berlin. I put it to Mr Schindler that in releasing a name and a photograph, the police must be pretty certain who'd been responsible.

9:46Yes, because he is still at large. The police is trying to inform the public as much as possible because the individual continues to be deemed dangerous. And of course, there's a clear warning to inform the police, but in no way, shape or form approach the individual should anyone encounter him in Berlin. Germany is becoming somewhat infamous for car ramming attacks. I believe there have been four in the last four years. What do you make of that? It's correct. Unfortunately, this has been proven to be an effective tool of terrorism because it is, on the one hand, very inconspicuous and doesn't require complicated preparation.

10:24On the other hand, it is very hard to really secure large scale events. And we had large scale events being attacked by cars. On the one hand, of course, the horrible attack on the Christmas market in 2024 with an anti-Islamist, but also, of course, the attack with a car at the Christmas market in 2016 by an IS member. Or more recently, in May 2025, the attack on a demonstration in Munich, again by someone being radicalized by ISIS. The problem here was that the event itself was sufficiently secured. And what happened was that a group of people either coming or going to the event in the park next to the event were attacked by this car.

11:13So there wasn't a particular vulnerability here? Well, there has been a dead and quite a lot of injured. So, of course, something has gone majorly wrong and we will have to do an analysis. But as far as the physical barriers are concerned, I think this is now a case where you can demonstrate the limits of what you can do. The physical barriers are always the last line of defense. If the perpetrator gets to that last line of defense, there's always a risk that he will find a gap. Now, here the gap was people going to and from the event. So the question is, how far outside can you physically push the security cordon?

11:53Or would you have to close down the entire centre of Berlin because there's a major event? So this will all be part, of course, of very detailed investigations, I'm quite sure, in this case. And those physical barriers, those concrete barriers to traffic are a hallmark, aren't they, at public events in Germany now? Unfortunately, because of all of these terror attacks on major events and Christmas markets, this has become, unfortunately, a feature. and for this event too the main part of the event so the big four lane road leading to the Brandenburg Gate was closed not on the day of the event but several days ahead of the event and there were physical barriers also in the park right next to the event but the attack happened slightly Tiergarten is a huge park in the center of Berlin so the attack happened at the other end of the park and then it really is a question of how far can you push the security cordon or should you push the security corner.

12:50The police inquiry will obviously be into the Islamist threat now. What is the scale of that in your estimation in Germany at the moment? Well, unfortunately, we do have a diverse threat just from the Islamist scene. Obviously, when we're talking about the CSD, the Pride Parade, you also have to take into account that there could be threats from the right-wing extremist scene, who is always hating on the CSD as much as the Islamists do. But we do have a Hamas sympathizer scene in Germany and Berlin. We have a Hezbollah sympathizer scene, and we had not as many as you had in London, but also one attack organized by this ominous high network, who turned out to be a co-production of Iraqi Shia militias with the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard Intelligence Service of Iran, hiring criminals through these attacks.

13:43And then, of course, you have the general threat by IS, both from Afghanistan, but also from other parts of IS, because IS is growing globally quite substantially at this point again. Hans-Jakob Schindler, who is Senior Director of Germany's Counter-Extremism Project, you're with the BBC World Service. We're live from London. This is NewsHour.

14:14Coming up, the BBC's Tom Brook explores why the all-American diner is still so popular in Hollywood. I've seen people sobbing uncontrollably after a breakup at a diner. I've seen people celebrating at a diner. That sense of the unexpected is very much a draw for filmmakers because anything could happen. The headlines this hour. the German Chancellor says a car attack on Berlin's Pride Parade by a man with alleged Islamist links was an attack on German society. A third of a million people in France and Spain have now been ordered to leave their homes to escape wildfires, and Israeli settlers have set fire to two mosques in the occupied West Bank as tensions with Palestinians continue.

15:14I'm Paul Henley with NewsHour, live from the BBC. Every day, dozens of Palestinian patients from the occupied West Bank cross into Israel for desperately needed specialised medical care that they can't get at home. Waiting to drive them to hospital are Israeli volunteers, and they've increased in number since the October 7th attacks of 2023, Since the war started, it's become an increasingly rare space for Israelis and Palestinians to speak and to build trust. It's a meeting of two worlds amid the trauma of war. The BBC's Naomi Sherbal Ball has been joining the patients and volunteers for the car journeys from the checkpoints to hospitals inside Israel.

15:58Every week, 24-year-old Nasser Adi stands with his mother on the edge of Beit Umar in the occupied West Bank, waiting for a lift to hospital in Israel. Heightened tensions in the West Bank after Hamas' October 7th attacks and the war in Gaza that followed, as well as the recent unprecedented rise in settler violence, make his journey for treatment even more fraught. The situation is always dense. If anyone starts any problem at the checkpoint or carries an impact, the impact can affect us all. So I am always on guard. Thankfully, nothing has happened to me personally, but I always stay cautious.

16:45There isn't any prostitutes. I still have Jewish friends, but at the same time, there is fear. And it goes both ways. They are also afraid of Arabs. Nasser is one of thousands of Palestinian patients who are treated in Israeli hospitals every year, paid for by the Palestinian Authority. He suffers from a rare enzyme disorder which can be life-threatening. Even leaving Nasser's home is far from straightforward. Just arrived at one of the entrances to Beit Umar. There's a bright orange gate which straddles the road into town. and most of the roads that provide access to the town have been blocked in this way for much of the war.

17:30The Israeli military say that it's a security measure. But it makes life here very difficult, preventing residents from driving in and out of town. And so at the gate, people have to get out and then walk across the Orange Gate and take another car or taxi to continue their journey.

17:57Despite the bleak outlook, the family has an unlikely ally trying to support them.

18:0778-year-old Myron Joshua from a neighbouring settlement laughs and chats in Hebrew with Nasser and his family. I definitely became what I call an unsettled settler. Myron is a volunteer from Road to Recovery, a charity which drives Palestinian patients from the West Bank to hospital in Israel. He lives in Kva Etsyon, the first Israeli settlement to be built in the West Bank, in 1967. Under international law, settlements are illegal. I can understand Israelis who look to me and say, but if you're so unsettled about what's happening, why don't you just leave? If I close my eyes and my life to what's going on here, I don't know if I'm contributing to the future.

18:50By living here, I have the naive feeling that I can hopefully be a thorn in the side of my co-settlers and that I can also reach out to Palestinians and help them in ways I couldn't do it in the past. Driving through the checkpoint into Israel every week, the group casts an unusual image. Myron, an Orthodox Jew, wearing a kippah, driving Nasser and his mother, Supper, wearing a hijab. Myron calls it a tent of Abraham. The minute young people don't come into contact with Israelis, the fact that Israelis don't come into contact with Palestinians, we demonize each other. But since October 7th, it's almost as if we're building the fear, but the fear is real, the fear is true, but we're like casting it in cement, making it so we can't deal with it.

19:44Last year, 55 ,000 visits by Palestinian patients were approved by Israel, 50 % more than the year before. According to international law, as an occupying power in the West Bank, Israel does have a legal obligation to provide access to health care, but a third of patients and the carers who request to cross with them still had their permits refused by Israel. For those that navigate the permissions needed, these volunteer drivers make that access to life-saving treatment possible. It's actually grown from taking him to the hospital to friendship, to almost a partnership. And I'd be creating hope, right?

20:24But I pray to feel that one day be hopeful. I'm a pessimist. A realist. Naomi Sherbel Ball reporting. You can hear more about their journey on Driving Across the Divide, part of the documentary podcast series here on the BBC World Service.

20:46Now, an endorsement by the entrepreneur and high-profile celebrity Kylie Jenner can make a difference to a brand. She has over 380 million followers on Instagram, so when she teamed up with Meta to provide a new version of its smart AI glasses, a version that uses her own voice as the AI assistant in the glasses, it was always going to attract attention. Perhaps, though, not the attention that had been hoped for, because there's been a backlash online and on social media worldwide, with some people calling the glasses deeply creepy and dystopian due to concerns over privacy. Among other things that they can do, the glasses are able to record people without them knowing.

21:27We asked some people here in London what they thought of them. At the moment you see a lot more negativity about it with invading people's privacy and not giving people the chance to know that they're being recorded. I guess it really kind of comes down to who do you want to have your information? Do you want Meta to have it? Do you want the government to have it? Do you want to have it? Because you'll never have it. But I mean, sometimes it's funny to see just like a glimpse into someone's life. That I'm not opposed to is the kind of like taking advantage of people not knowing that you're recording them.

22:00Kind of like, I'm trying to get something out of this, but you kind of don't really know that. Well, I actually work in AI, so I do think that smart glasses are actually a pretty good thing. I do think that this is something that we can incorporate into our daily life, which makes people slowly start to realize that AI can be used in a good way. On the most part, I do think it's very helpful. Dr Sarah Saska is a Canadian entrepreneur and tech expert. She is co-founder and CEO of Feminuity, a consultancy focusing on responsible approaches to technology. And she explained what the concerns were about Meta's smart glasses.

22:40The Meta Ray-Ban glasses are camera glasses that also include audio and sensors that people wear on their face. And ultimately, they record your point of view as you go throughout your day, throughout your home, throughout life, and they send that data back to meta. They're fairly undetectable. But in many places in the world, our laws, our policies, regulations just haven't kind of caught up for this, right? This technology is outpacing some of those more archaic systems. I think at a fundamental level, the issue is that we cannot opt out of someone else's glasses, right? So for the most part, the onus is on the wearer ultimately to not exploit the technology, right?

23:22There have been stories about folks who are part of the LGBTQ community, say, being outed, right, without their consent because they've been captured. These glasses have led to different forms of stalking, right, matching a face to a name to someone's workplace or their address. People have captured footage that they have then used for different forms of extortion. Canadian tech entrepreneur Sarah Saskia there. You're listening to the BBC World Service, live from London. It's NewsHour.

24:14We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature. Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to, or the succulents that adorn our homes. Nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it. But the outdoors is closer than we realize. With AllTrails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently with offline maps and on-trail navigation. Download the free app today and make the most of your summer with AllTrails. I'm Simon Jack. I'm Zing Zing. And on Good Bad Billionaire, we're exploring the life and fortune of music megastar Sir Paul McCartney.

24:54Macca. As one of the primary songwriters in The Beatles and with an extensive solo career, his work generates vast and continuous royalty streams. But were song royalties alone enough to break the billion? And earn him the title of the first British billionaire rock star? Find out in Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now, search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

25:22Welcome back. The head of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has begun a visit to West Africa, Ghana and Cameroon. The Archbishop is the first woman in the job and that comes with controversy, including objections from some of the more traditional elements of the church in Africa. Add to that that Dame Sarah Mullally is a champion of same-sex unions and you have a visit that's not universally welcomed. I've been speaking to Reginald Frimpong Ansar Ajay, International Communications Director for the Anglican Church in Ghana. It meant so much to the Ghanaian young lady to aspire to any height that they want to go in this life.

26:01And so the women and young ladies in Ghana are really excited and are counting themselves blessed and lucky. Now it's fair to say, isn't it, that not everyone in the church in Ghana shares your joy over the fact that the Archbishop is a woman? I mean, you should expect that in life there's diversity, but majority of the people from Accra, Mampong, Kumase, Hipkos, Second D, Tamale Diocese, there's joy. There's a lot of joy. What do you say to the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, a group of Orthodox churches that expressed clear displeasure over her appointment simply because she is a woman?

26:41We say to them, let's come together. Whatever God does is good in his sight. So let's come together. This is God's doing. There's nothing we can do about it and we should be excited about it. It's testing differences, not just her gender, but the fact that she champions same-sex couples, which is obviously a source of contention in the global Anglican community. Same-sex marriage is not recognised in Ghana. Homosexuality has been re-declared illegal there. That is an ongoing issue. And we would want to focus on the positive and leave those conversations to those who want to have that conversation.

27:20But so far as we are concerned in Ghana, we are excited she's here and we are receiving her with a lot of joy. OK, but in the past, Dame Sarah Mullally has actively wanted those conversations. She's among the people who wants to talk about homosexuality. I think that we would create the time, we would create the opportunity and we would have that conversation when the time is really right. When will the time be right? Very soon. God's time is always the best. If she chose to raise this issue during her visit to Ghana, championing same-sex couples, how would it go down? I think that it is one of the things that we would want as much as possible not to destroy the joy that she comes with.

28:03There's timing for everything. In Ghana, we have our own way of doing a lot of things. So when the time is right, this conversation will be had by the Anglican Church in Ghana. But I'm not talking about an internal conversation among the church. I'm talking about this conversation we're having now. Is the Anglican Church in Ghana, does it stand against homosexuality, or is it something that it is open to? The Anglican Church is in the middle. God's Christian is God's Christian. We do not condemn, we do not praise. That was Reginald Frimpong Ansar Ajay of the Anglican Church in Ghana.