{German police say attacker who killed nine people before turning gun on himself was an 18-year-old from Munich.}<\/p>\n
A shooting rampage at a busy shopping centre in Munich, which killed at least nine people, was carried out by a sole attacker, who then shot himself dead, German police said early on Saturday.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to convene her security council on Saturday. The shooting 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.<\/p>\n
“The perpetrator was an 18-year-old German-Iranian from Munich,” police chief Hubertus Andrae told reporters, adding that there was no sign of any additional shooters involved in the incident.<\/p>\n
The suspect had dual citizenship and “no criminal record”, Andrae said.<\/p>\n
“The motive or explanation for this crime is completely unclear.”<\/p>\n
Two men initially suspected as accomplices in the shooting who had left the scene in a car were later interviewed and cleared, police said.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera’s David Chater, reporting from outside the shopping centre in Munich, said that the attack appeared to be the work of one lone gunman.<\/p>\n
“He was heard shouting at the top of the mall to a group of spectators … that he was German,” Chater said, referencing a widely-circulated video posted on social media.<\/p>\n
“Police are looking at two aspects of his background: one that he might had been anti-immigrant, and the other that he might had been radicalised in some way.”<\/p>\n
At least 21 people, including children, were wounded in the attack, 16 of whom were still being treated in hospital.<\/p>\n
{{State of emergency}}<\/p>\n
The shooter’s body was found about 1km away from the shopping centre. A red rucksack found near the body was being examined for explosives, police said.<\/p>\n
The shooting triggered a series of evacuations of public places in the southern city, as well as suspension of public transportation and deployment of special forces.<\/p>\n
Munich authorities said early on Saturday that people could now leave their homes after an earlier warning to keep off the streets.<\/p>\n
They also said public transportation in the city was up and running again.
\nThe shooting started shortly before 16:00 GMT, with authorities initially saying witnesses had reported seeing three gunmen.<\/p>\n
A video posted on social media appeared to show a man dressed in black walking away from a McDonald’s fast food restaurant while firing repeatedly on people as they fled.<\/p>\n
A wide area around the busy shopping centre was closed off as special forces rushed to the scene.<\/p>\n
“The police was just flying by – another car about every 15 or 30 seconds,” Ryan Sink, who was passing by the shopping centre, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
“No one really knew what was going on,” Sink added.<\/p>\n
“We were all pulling over frantically and watching them set up a perimeter … Police were telling people passing by to get out of the way and away from the buildings.”<\/p>\n
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was being regularly briefed during the attack, Peter Altmaier, her chief of staff, said on Friday.<\/p>\n
In response to the attack, Facebook activated its safety feature, allowing Munich residents and visitors to let their friends know they were unharmed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{German police say attacker who killed nine people before turning gun on himself was an 18-year-old from Munich.} A shooting rampage at a busy shopping centre in Munich, which killed at least nine people, was carried out by a sole attacker, who then shot himself dead, German police said early on Saturday. The third attack […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27148"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27148"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}