Shoppers rush out of the Olympia Einkaufzentrum shopping mall in Munich as the building was surrounded by armed police and emergency vehicles.
A teenage German-Iranian gunman who killed nine people in a shooting spree at a busy Munich shopping center and then committed suicide had likely acted alone, German police said yesterday.
The third attack on civilians in Europe in just over a week sent panicked shoppers fleeing the mall in Germany’s third-largest city as elite police launched a massive operation to track down what had initially been thought to be up to three assailants.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel convened her security council after the shooting, which came just days after an axe rampage on a train in the same German state of Bavaria and just over a week after a truck attack in the French Riviera city of Nice that killed 84 people.
“The perpetrator was an 18-year-old German-Iranian from Munich,” police chief Hubertus Andrae told reporters, adding that he had no criminal record.
“The motive or explanation for this crime is completely unclear,” he said.
Earlier, a police spokesman had said terrorism was suspected, without revealing any immediate indications of an Islamist link.
Armed with a handgun, the attacker opened fire at a McDonald’s restaurant early Friday evening and continued in the street before entering the mall, killing nine people and wounding 16, according to the latest toll.
Andrae said there were young people among the dead and that some of the injured were children.
A police patrol had shot and wounded the gunman but he managed to escape, he said. The suspected attacker’s body was later found about one kilometer from the mall, German DPA news agency reported.
“We found a man who killed himself. We assume that he was the only shooter,” police said on Twitter.
“We entered McDonald’s to eat… then there was panic, and people ran out,” one woman told Bavarian public television. She said she heard three gunshots, “children were crying, people rushed to the exit in panic.”
Police initially believed there could be up to three assailants. But Andrae later clarified that two others who had been thought to be linked had “absolutely nothing to do” with the attack — and that they were simply fleeing the scene.
Munich’s main train station was evacuated and metro and bus transport in the city suspended for several hours while residents were ordered to stay inside, leaving the streets largely deserted. By early Saturday, transport services were running again.
“We are determined to do everything we can so that terror and inhuman violence stand no chance in Germany,” Merkel’s chief of staff Peter Altmaier said.
German President Joachim Gauck said he was horrified by the “murderous attack” at the mall, while US President Barack Obama and French counterpart François Hollande voiced staunch support for their close ally.
“Germany’s one of our closest allies, so we are going to pledge all the support that they may need in dealing with these circumstances,” Obama said.
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