By Kirsti Knolle
BERLIN, July 25 (Reuters) – Many people were hurt, with some in life-threatening condition, after a vehicle apparently drove into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride celebrations on Saturday evening, the city’s police said, after German media reported one person had been killed.
Emergency services responded to an incident in the city’s central Tiergarten park close to the Brandenburg Gate, where police said a white vehicle appeared to have struck multiple people.
“There are many injured, among whom multiple people have life-threatening injuries,” police said on X, adding that an urgent manhunt was underway for one or more possible perpetrators.
That police update was provided shortly after tabloid newspaper Bild and German news agency DPA reported that one person had been killed and 14 injured, citing police.
Hundreds of thousands of people had gathered peacefully in the German capital for the annual Christopher Street Day celebrations, one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ events, before the apparent attack brought it to an abrupt end.
A large number of emergency service vehicles were present at the scene.
Bild cited a witness as saying a white van drove into the crowd at high speed and a man then got out of the vehicle and fled on foot.
The police and interior ministry were not immediately available for comment.
Christopher Street Day draws hundreds of thousands of people to the German capital each year. The event commemorates the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York and combines a parade with political demands for equality, inclusion and protection against discrimination.
First held in West Berlin in 1979, the CSD has grown from a small demonstration into a major fixture of the city’s cultural and political calendar. The parade is the centrepiece of the CSD, but it is accompanied by a wide range of political, cultural and party events held across the city.
(Reporting by Kirsti Knolle in Berlin and Sabine Wollrab in FrankfurtWriting by Francois MurphyEditing by Rod Nickel, Matthew Lewis and David Gregorio)
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