Munich shooting: What we know
Attack by as many as three gunmen has left at least 8 people dead and many injured
At least eight people were killed and several gravely injured on Friday in a shooting rampage at a Munich shopping centee, with the attackers still at large.
Police in the locked-down southern Germany city warned of an “acute terror” situation.
Here is what we know:
What happened?
The shooters armed with “long guns” opened fire at a McDonald’s restaurant and continued onto a street before entering the Olympia (OEZ) mall near the Olympic stadium in Munich.
The shooting started shortly before 1600 GMT and authorities said witnesses reported seeing three gunmen.
A video posted on social media appeared to show a man dressed in black walking away from the McDonald’s while firing repeatedly on people as they fled.
Authorities evacuated the main train station in the city of some 1.4 million, while metro and bus transport services were suspended in the wake of the assault.
The shopping centre, which opened in the 1970s and bills itself as Bavaria’s biggest, was surrounded by armed police, while a helicopter buzzed overhead.
The Olympia mall is near the stadium for the 1972 Olympics and the athletes’ village, which was the site of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by the Palestinian Black September group.
Munich police said on Twitter that there were an “unknown number of injured people.”
Was it a terror attack?
A Munich police spokesman told AFP they suspected “terrorism” in the rampage, while German news agency DPA quoted police as warning of an “acute terror situation.”
The three attackers were still at large, fleeing in the direction of a nearby metro station, media reports said.
There was no information about the possible motives of the shooting, but Europe has been on alert in the wake of a string of attacks including bombings in neighbouring France and Belgium.
The shooting spree comes on the fifth anniversary of right-wing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik’s massacre in Norway that killed 77 people.
Train attacks
The violence comes just days after a teenage asylum seeker went on a rampage with an ax and a knife on a regional train in Germany on Monday, injuring five people, two of them critically.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the teenager was believed to be a “lone wolf” attacker who appeared to have been “inspired” by the Islamic State group but was not a member of the jihadist network.
The assailant had arrived as an unaccompanied minor in Germany in June 2015 and had been staying with a foster family in the region of the attack for the last two weeks.