Prosecutors said the suspect had previously sought to join the militant Islamic State group.

The suspect in the deadly Berlin Pride attack that left one person dead and 29 injured was shot and killed by police during a confrontation on Sunday in a suburb of the city, authorities said.

Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, was killed following a search that lasted nearly 24 hours after the attack in downtown Berlin. Prosecutors said he had previously sought to join the militant Islamic State group.

Ballout was suspected of driving a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride festival Saturday night before apparently stabbing others with a machete in what authorities believe was an Islamic extremist terror attack.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the attack occurred a few hundred meters (yards) from a party near the Brandenburg Gate that was supposed to close out the city’s Pride festival.

Ballout was tracked down around 6 p.m. Sunday at a garden in Spandau, a Berlin suburb, the city’s police department wrote on X. They said he apparently ran toward officers with a sharp instrument, and police fired at least one shot. He died at the scene.

Ballout was born in Germany, the minister said. His mother was naturalized in 2002, three years before he was born.

  • idiomaddict@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    3 days ago

    That’s a failure on the part of the schools/Kindergärten. Children start attending government institutions at between two and four years of age. It should be perfectly possible for nonnative speakers to master German as well as any other student there, and it’s not hard as a teacher to mix students up and give them a chance to gel with new classmates.

    Teaching children a language other than the main spoken one in their country gives them a huge benefit towards general language ability. The teachers and schools just have to consider it when planning lessons, but with a little attention, a four year old spending six hours a day in a language bath is going to learn the language. Then they’ll have two different ways of thinking about communication from the start, whereas other students might wait until they’re 8 to begin learning their second language.