Berlin, July 26 (dpa/GNA) – German Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil, on Sunday said the right to live freely must be defended, after the fatal attack on Berlin’s Christopher Street Day (CSD) Pride parade.
“CSD stands for the right of every person to live freely,” said Klingbeil, who is also finance minister and the co-leader of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD). “We will defend that.”
Fellow SPD co-leader Bärbel Bas said she was “deeply shocked by the horrific attack,” which left one woman killed and 16 people injured on Saturday evening, near the German capital’s Tiergarten park.
Police are searching for a 21-year-old suspect known to authorities for his Islamist leanings. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier also strongly condemned the incident. “This act is an attack on our open society, on our way of life and on our ability to live together,” he said in Hamm, where he was attending a temple festival organized by the Hindu community in Germany.
He said he was “shocked and appalled by the suspected attack on Christopher Street Day in Berlin, where hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world had come together to celebrate peacefully and joyfully, to send a message of tolerance and diversity, and to stand up for a self-determined life based on equality.”
GNA