One person was killed and at least 16 others injured on Saturday night when a car drove into a crowd near Berlin's Christopher Street Day parade, one of the largest LGBTQ celebrations in Europe, prompting organisers to call off the event and triggering a citywide manhunt.

The incident happened at around 10pm local time close to Tiergarten, the sprawling park in the centre of the German capital, near the route of the Pride march. According to police, a white car struck several people on a footpath in the park before colliding with a tree and coming to a stop. Some of the injured were in a life-threatening condition, a police spokesperson said, and emergency crews treated the wounded at the scene as the surrounding area was sealed off.

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Hundreds of thousands of people had gathered in Berlin for the annual event, with organisers earlier estimating a turnout approaching a million. The parade was cancelled once the scale of the incident became clear, and crowds were moved away from the area while officers combed the ground for evidence between Potsdamer Platz and the southern edge of the Tiergarten tunnel.

Police mounted a large operation to find those responsible, deploying helicopters and thermal-imaging cameras and widening the search across the city. By the early hours of Sunday, a spokesperson said investigators had identified a suspect a man known to authorities but had not yet made an arrest.

Authorities have not established why the car entered the park and cautioned that the investigation was at an early stage.

Christopher Street Day is held every summer in cities across Germany, with Berlin's among the biggest. It commemorates the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York, when patrons of the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street resisted a police raid an event widely regarded as a turning point in the modern movement for LGBTQ rights. The Berlin edition typically features a parade, live music, political speeches and celebrations running late into the night.