6 DEAD IN MUNICH MALL SHOOTING; POLICE HUNT UP TO 3 SUSPECTS

MUNICH (AP) — Munich police warned people to stay inside and avoid public places Friday as they hunted for the shooter or shooters who opened fire at a shopping mall, killing six people and wounding others in a rampage they described as suspected terrorism. 

“At the moment no culprit has been arrested,” police in the Bavarian capital said on social media. “The search is taking place at high speed.”

Germany’s elite GSG9 anti-terror police, as well as federal police, were called in to help.

Witnesses reported seeing three men with firearms near the Olympia Einkaufszentrum mall. Munich police spokesman Marcus Martins told The Associated Press police were aware of media reports that a man killed himself as officers closed in, but said there was no confirmation of that.

The city sent a smartphone alert telling people to stay indoors and German rail company Deutsche Bahn stopped train traffic to Munich’s main station.

The attack started at a fast food restaurant shortly before 6 p.m. local time, police spokesman Thomas Baumann told German news agency dpa.

Video obtained by The Associated Press from German news agency NonstopNews showed two bodies with sheets draped over them not far from a McDonald’s across from the mall.

Germany’s Interior Ministry said Munich police had set up a hotline for concerned citizens. On Twitter, police asked people to refrain from speculating on the attack. Germany’s interior minister cut short his holiday in the United States to go back to Berlin late Friday to meet with security officials.

Bayrischer Rundfunk reported that shops in the center of Munich had closed with customers inside though police said reports of shots fired at a location downtown had been a false alarm.

Police responded in large numbers to the mall in the northern part of Munich, not far from the city’s Olympic Stadium in the Moosach district of the Bavarian capital.

It was also not far from where Palestinian attackers opened fire in the Olympic Village in 1972, killing 11 Israeli athletes.

It was the second attack in Germany in less than a week. On Monday, a 17-year-old Afghan wounded four people in an ax-and-knife attack on a regional train near the Bavarian city of Wuerzburg, and another woman outside as he fled. All survived, although one man from the train remains in life-threatening condition. The attacker was shot and killed by police.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the train attack, but authorities have said the teen likely acted alone.

Munich police called the mall shooting “suspected terrorism” in a statement but did not elaborate on who might have been behind it.

In the U.S., President Barack Obama pledged to provide Germany with whatever help it might need to investigate the mall shooting.

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