KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian ballistic missiles struck Kyiv early on Sunday, setting off fires and wounding at least three civilians, while attacks on other parts of Ukraine later killed at least two people, local officials reported.
The strikes come as Ukraine’s successful drone attacks have stalled the Russian army’s advances in an expanded campaign inside Russia that has been causing fuel shortages and piling pressure on Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Click to Gallery
In this photo provided by Ukraine's 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade press service and taken Saturday, July 25, 2026, Ukrainian servicemen repair the damaged anti-drone net in the frontline town of Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine. (Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade via AP)
Rescuers carry a body that they removed from under the rubble of an private house following a drone attack from Russia, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko)
Rescuers search through the rubble of a private house destroyed by a Russian drone in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko)
This photo provided by Ukraine's 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade press service and taken Saturday, July 25, 2026, shows the damaged center of the frontline town of Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine. (Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade via AP)
This photo provided by Ukraine's 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade press service and taken Saturday, July 25, 2026, shows the damaged center of the frontline town of Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine. (Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade via AP)
In Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, Kremlin-installed authorities said a Ukrainian drone strike had killed four civilians in the city of Horlivka. According to Ivan Prikhodko, the city’s Russian-appointed mayor, the city had been under fire since the early hours of Sunday.
According to Russia’s defense ministry, Russian forces overnight struck down 133 Ukrainian drones over Russia, the Black Sea and Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow forcibly annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Blasts rocked Kyiv in the early hours of Sunday, with falling debris sparking a blaze in a tower block near the historic center, according to mayor Vitali Klitschko.
Elsewhere in the capital, falling debris set fire to buildings, cars and car parks, Klitschko added. He said three people had been wounded, with one needing hospital treatment.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned in his evening address on Friday that intelligence assessments indicated that Russia was preparing missiles for a large attack, saying there were indications that this could happen in the next 48 hours.
Russia’s defense ministry claimed on Sunday that its latest attack on Kyiv had struck sites linked to drone production.
Also Sunday, a drone strike on Kharkiv — Ukraine’s second-largest city in the east — killed one person and wounded at least six others, including two children, mayor Igor Terekhov reported.
In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, a Russian glide bomb killed one man and wounded at least six other people, according to mayor Ivan Fedorov.
Both Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia have been frequent targets for Russian attacks, with Zaporizhzhia — just over 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) from the front line — suffering heavy bombardment in recent months.
On Friday, a major Russian strike near Kyiv killed at least 10 people and wounded around 100 others, part of a cycle of tit-for-tat attacks that dims the potential of reaching a diplomatic end to Russia’s more than 4-year-old invasion of its neighbor.
Meanwhile, Finnish President Alexander Stubb claimed on Sunday that “Ukraine’s position is stronger than ever since the war began".
Following a call with his Ukrainian counterpart — and appearing to allude to Kyiv’s recent drone campaign that has struck major Russian energy sites and sought to choke off military supplies — Stubb wrote on X that “continued support from (Ukraine's) partners is critical to keep up the momentum."
Romanian President Nicușor Dan said on Sunday that the country's forces had shot down another drone that had breached its airspace — the third in three days. He called the incidents “inadmissible and intolerable."
“A new drone was shot down this morning, at 10:13, by an F-16 aircraft of the Romanian Air Force, over the territorial waters of Romania, in the Sulina–Chilia area,” Dan wrote in a post on X.
The day before, a drone that crossed from Ukraine into Romania was downed in an “unpopulated area” near the border, according to a Facebook post by Dan. On Friday, a drone was shot down near Padina, northeast of the Romanian capital, Bucharest.
Dan said that a formal probe into Friday's attack found the weapon to have been a Shahed-type drone commonly used by Moscow to strike Ukraine.
A series of drone incursions by Russia and Ukraine have hit Romania and other NATO members since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In this photo provided by Ukraine's 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade press service and taken Saturday, July 25, 2026, Ukrainian servicemen repair the damaged anti-drone net in the frontline town of Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine. (Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade via AP)
Rescuers carry a body that they removed from under the rubble of an private house following a drone attack from Russia, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko)
Rescuers search through the rubble of a private house destroyed by a Russian drone in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko)
This photo provided by Ukraine's 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade press service and taken Saturday, July 25, 2026, shows the damaged center of the frontline town of Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine. (Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade via AP)
This photo provided by Ukraine's 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade press service and taken Saturday, July 25, 2026, shows the damaged center of the frontline town of Druzhkivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine. (Iryna Rybakova/Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade via AP)
BERLIN (AP) — German investigators on Sunday hunted a man who allegedly drove a van into a crowd near Berlin’s Pride festival, killing one person and wounding many more, before apparently stabbing others with a machete in what authorities believe was an Islamic extremist terror attack.
Authorities issued a wanted notice and warned people against approaching Abdul Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, saying that he may be armed and dangerous.
“Everything we see here points to us dealing with an Islamic terror attack,” Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said.
Dobrindt put the total number of injured at 29.
Ashley Jump, a 26-year-old U.K. resident, had traveled to Berlin for Saturday’s Pride parade but had left the celebrations before the attack. They returned Sunday to leave flowers at a memorial near the crime scene in support of the LGBTQ+ community.
“They’ll never erase us, we’ll never be gone,” they said. “As long as humanity has existed, we’ve existed. And as long as humanity exists, we will exist. We will not be removed.”
Dobrindt said the suspect had come to authorities’ attention in the past because of numerous previous crimes, of which he didn’t give details, and also because of “radicalization and belonging to the Islamist scene” in the German capital.
He said Ballout was born in Germany, and that his mother was naturalized in 2002 — three years before he was born.
Dobrindt said the suspect had been convicted in Berlin in the past, though he didn’t specify for what. He said that he had been given a suspended sentence of 1 year and 10 months.
Police conducted operations in the city as they searched for the suspect. Those included a search at an apartment in Berlin's Schöneberg district in the early hours of Sunday, but police said they found no one there.
According to police, a white van drove into the Tiergarten park around 10 p.m. and hit several people before colliding with a tree. The closing party at the Pride festival, known as Christopher Street Day, was ongoing at the time next to the Brandenburg Gate, a short distance away. The party followed a parade with some 80 trucks that had made its way through downtown Berlin earlier in the day.
The attack did not occur at the festival, along its route or at the closing party. Rather, the violence took place a few hundred meters (yards) away on a track in the Tiergarten park. The van drove into a crowd that was likely a mix of festivalgoers and other locals or visitors.
Police said a woman was killed. Berlin’s fire service said that three people sustained life-threatening injuries and another eight were seriously injured.
The Pride event next to the Brandenburg Gate was called off around 10:15 p.m. and a band’s performance on stage was interrupted. People were urged to go home and to avoid taking the route through the park.
Hundreds of thousands of people had come to Berlin to celebrate on Saturday, though it’s unclear how many were still at the festival by late evening. It’s one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ+ celebrations.
The van, with its battered front resting against a tree, could still be seen at the scene Sunday morning.
“We are simply stunned by what happened,” said Andre Lehmann, a top official with the main national LGBTQ+ association, LSVD+. “This suspected attack hits the heart of the queer community.”
Chancellor Friedrich Merz described what happened as “an attack on our society.” He added in a post on X that Germany loves freedom, “and we will preserve and defend that.”
Dobrindt said he expected security measures at other major events in Germany, including Pride events elsewhere, to be reviewed and if necessary significantly strengthened.
He pointed to concern about possible copycat crimes, adding that “this is not typical of such situations, but it also can’t be ruled out.”
Berlin has seen Islamic extremist attacks before. In December, 2016, a rejected asylum seeker from Tunisia plowed a hijacked truck into a Christmas market, killing 13 people and injuring dozens. He was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.
In February last year, a Spanish tourist was stabbed and seriously wounded at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial. A Syrian man was convicted in March and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Saturday's violence “is suspected to be an Islamist terror attack on our way of living together, on our liberal democracy, on our openness and our freedom,” Wegner said.
In the neighboring Netherlands, Amsterdam is hosting World Pride this week and next alongside its own annual Pride celebrations. Mayor Femke Halsema said authorities and organizers “are closely monitoring the security situation” after the Berlin attack but aim to prevent any extra measures getting in the way of celebrating freedom and love.
Associated Press reporters Kirsten Grieshaber, Fanny Brodersen, Pietro De Cristofaro and Stefanie Dazio in Berlin, and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.
A man writes a message on a board at the memorial site commemorating the victims near the scene where a car rammed into a crowd near the Pride March in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Two men hold hands at the memorial site commemorating the victims near the scene where a car rammed into a crowd near the Pride March in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Two people embrace near others wearing thermal blankets as they stand near emergency personnel in Berlin, early Sunday, July 26, 2026, following the cancellation of Christopher Street Day festivities. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Police officers stand near a vehicle crashed into a tree after driving into a crowd near Berlin's annual Pride event, in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Police officers stand near a vehicle crashed into a tree after driving into a crowd near Berlin's annual Pride event, in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Police officers stand near a vehicle crashed into a tree after driving into a crowd near Berlin's annual Pride event, in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Two people walk together past emergency vehicles in Berlin, early Sunday, July 26, 2026, following the cancellation of Christopher Street Day festivities. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Emergency personnel and police gather in Berlin, early Sunday, July 26, 2026, following the cancellation of Christopher Street Day festivities. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Emergency personnel and police gather in Berlin, early Sunday, July 26, 2026, following the cancellation of Christopher Street Day festivities. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Emergency personnel and police gather in Berlin, early Sunday, July 26, 2026, following the cancellation of Christopher Street Day festivities. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Two people embrace near others wearing thermal blankets as they stand near emergency personnel in Berlin, early Sunday, July 26, 2026, following the cancellation of Christopher Street Day festivities. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
