Munich residents describe scenes of fear as city under lockdown

Munich residents described scenes of fear, confusion and panic throughout the city Friday evening as news spread of a shooting spree by as many as three gunmen at a mall, that left several people dead and injured.

The city’s main train station was evacuated and metro and bus transport in the city suspended, and police told residents to stay in their homes, as vast numbers of security personnel descended on the city to catch the perpetrators.

The shooting began before 6 p.m. local time at a McDonald’s restaurant and continued on a nearby street before the gunmen moved into the mall near the Olympic stadium in the southern German city, a police spokeswoman said.

An employee of one of the stores at the shopping mall described the mayhem in the moments after the shooting.

“Many shots were fired, I can’t say how many but it’s been a lot,” the man told the local NTV station, according to the Guardian.

“All the people from outside came streaming into the store and I only saw one person on the ground who was so severely injured that he definitely didn’t survive.

“We have no further information, we’re just staying in the back in the storage rooms,” he said.

Residents of the city were offering their homes on social media to people in need of a safe location off the streets, using the hashtag #OffeneTür (Open Door).

Dominic Faust, a city resident who was in another shopping mall when reports of the shooting came in, described the fearful response of locals to BBC News.

“Well, about two hours ago people came screaming inside the mall. Those people told us that there was a shooting outside and so the security closed the door of this mall and asked everybody to go upstairs to the fifth floor. This is where I am right now with about 150 other folks and we are asked not to leave the building.”

A British man who works at a local bar told BBC News: “We’re getting information from BBC News and local Twitter feeds from German authorities, but it’s hard to know what’s realistic and what’s not.

“We’re in a cellar bar so we feel quite safe,” Sam Pound said. “But when you go to the street you can hear a lot of sirens and helicopters.”

It was the second attack in Germany’s Bavaria region this week. A teenager went on an ax rampage on a regional train near Wuerzburg on Monday, injuring five people, two of them critically. One victim is still fighting for his life, the hospital treating him said Friday.

“When the attack on the train happened everybody was shocked, of course, but we thought, well, that was just one person,” Jeanette Winter, a reporter for Bavaria Public Radio, told BBC World News. “To be honest I thought terror would not come to Munich. Now terror has struck our beautiful city… Oktoberfest will be held soon and that is, of course, a target for terrorists — we are all feeling very, very bad right now.”