At least 9 dead in Munich mall shooting

Police: At least 9 dead in Munich mall shooting




Last Updated Jul 22, 2016 5:21 PM EDT

MUNICH -- 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 at least eight people and wounding others in a rampage they described as suspected terrorism.


A source told CBS News that one gunman killed himself in the aftermath of the rampage at a McDonald's at the Olympia Einkaufszentrum mall.

Munich police spokesman Marcus Martins said a ninth body has been found at the scene and police are "intensively examining" it to see if it may be one of the attackers. Martin says "according to my knowledge, we're looking for three suspects" in the attack.

Witnesses reported seeing three men with firearms near the mall.

Police called the mall shooting "suspected terrorism" in a statement but did not elaborate on who might have been behind it. In Washington, the White House condemned what it called an "apparent terrorist attack."


A gunman is seen outside a McDonald's in Munich, Germany, on July 22, 2016, in this image taken from video posted to Twitter.

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


A U.S. law enforcement source told CBS News that it appeared that 10 people were wounded but the situation was fluid, CBS News senior investigative producer Pat Milton reports.

In Washington, President Obama reacted to the shooting in remarks to his policing task force.

"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," Mr. Obama said.


In Norway, the shooting happened on the same day that the country paid an emotional tribute to the 77 people killed in a bombing-and-shooting rampage by a far-right terrorist five years ago.

Munich 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.


An image capture taken from video footage shows special forces police officers walking along a street outside the Olympia shopping mall following a shooting rampage in Munich, Germany, on July 22, 2016.''

REUTERS/REUTERS TV

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.
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Germany's Interior Ministry said Munich police had set up a hotline for concerned citizens. Facebook launched its "safety check" feature for users to let their friends know whether they're OK. Residents of Munich opened their doors to people seeking shelter using the Twitter hashtag #opendoor.

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.


German Chancellor Angela Merkel's was being regularly briefed on the attack, said her chief of staff, Peter Altmaier.

"All that we know and can say right now is that it was a cruel and inhumane attack," he said on German public channel ARD. "We can't rule out that there are terrorist links. We can't confirm them, but we are investigating along those lines too."

Altmaier said numerous attacks had been prevented in Germany in recent years "but, and this is important, there can never be absolute security."

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. Five guerrillas and a police officer were also killed. The GSG9 anti-terrorism unit was created after that attack, though the city saw a worse one in 1980, when 13 people were killed and more than 200 injured at the city's annual Oktoberfest in a bombing blamed on a student with ties to a neo-Nazi group.

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 of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, claimed responsibility for the train attack, but authorities have said the teen likely acted alone.