A gunman went on a rampage Friday in a busy shopping area of Munich, killing nine people and wounding 21 others in an act of "suspected terrorism" before he committed suicide, police said early Saturday.
The attack prompted authorities to lock down much of the southern German city and launch a massive manhunt. After the search ended, police said that the suspected gunman was an 18-year-old with dual German and Iranian citizenship who had been living in the city.
The motive for the attack, the Munich police chief said, was "fully unclear."
The assault was the third act of carnage to shake Europe in eight days. It followed a July 14 attack by a Tunisian-born man who killed 84 people in the French Riviera city of Nice by plowing a truck into a crowd. On Monday, an Afghan teenager wielding an ax wounded five people on a train near the Bavarian city of Wurzburg. In both those cases, the assailants were inspired by the Islamic State, authorities said.
Nine people were killed and many injured after gunmen opened fire at a shopping centre in Munich in Germany
But German officials said investigators were looking into the possibility that Friday's attack was motivated by anti-immigrant sentiments, as well as the prospect that Islamist extremism was behind it.
There were no immediate details about the victims of Friday's attack on Munich's Olympia shopping complex. Munich's police chief, Hubertus Andra, said 10 people were killed in total, including the shooter, who committed suicide about half a mile away from the mall. Sixteen of the 21 wounded were still being treated early Saturday at hospitals, police said.
About 50 people of various ethnic backgrounds gathered at a Munich sports hall early Saturday to await official word on the fate of missing loved ones.
Much of the city was placed on lockdown for hours as police conducted the manhunt. Despite initial reports of multiple attack sites, police could not confirm attacks in any other locations besides the shopping area. They initially thought as many as three assailants were involved, but later said two people who had been spotted speeding away from the crime scene were not connected to the bloodshed.
Residents were going about their shopping at the busy Olympia mall, some eating at a McDonald's restaurant when the shooting began.
Officials did not immediately describe the full scope of the assault. But a senior security official told The Washington Post that four people were killed inside a McDonald's restaurant near the complex and that one was fatally shot outside. The official said another victim died at a hospital.
The initial investigation was pointing "in all directions," police spokesman Marcus da Gloria Martins told reporters in Munich.
There have been few mass shootings in recent years in Germany, which has tough gun laws, and police said they had not previously been aware of any threat posed by the gunman.
Authorities were also investigating whether the gunman may have been motivated by anger at immigrants. Language against foreigners can be heard on a recording from the scene of the shooting, but it was not immediately clear who was speaking. A German television station said a witness told a colleague that the shooter shouted "Bloody foreigners!" at the scene of the McDonald's attack. There was no immediate confirmation of that account.
Source:-NDTV
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