Thu 20 February 2020
Suspect of shootings and one other person also found dead after killing of at least nine in city near Frankfurt.
A man suspected of fatally shooting nine people in the German city of Hanau was found dead at his home early on Thursday, hours after the attacks in and outside two shisha lounges, police said.
Officers also found another body at the same address, police said.
Police gave no details of the suspected gunman but said “there are currently no indications of further perpetrators”.
They did not give details of his possible motive or how he died, or specify why they believe “with a high degree of probability” that he was the assailant.
The number of dead in the shootings on Wednesday evening rose to nine, a police statement said.
Officers sealed off and searched the apartment in Hanau’s Kesselstadt district, near the scene of one of the shootings, after following up witness statements on a getaway car.
Police said work to confirm the identities of the two bodies at the home was still underway, and they could not immediately give details either on them, or the identities of the victims of the earlier shootings.
Public broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk earlier reported that the first shots were fired at a shisha bar in the city centre, with witnesses saying they had heard eight or nine shots.
The report said that the perpetrators then drove to the western neighbourhood of Kesselstadt before they started shooting again at another shisha bar.
A third reported shooting in the northern neighbourhood of Lamboy was not confirmed, but a large police contingent was in the area, the DPA news agency reported.
‘Terrible evening’
Claus Kaminsky, the mayor of Hanau, said it was “an evening that you can hardly imagine being any worse.”
“It was a terrible evening, that will surely occupy us for a long, long time and stay with us in sad memories,” he said in comments he made to an online broadcast from Bild newspaper.
Kaminsky did not give any more details or shine any light on possible motives for the shootings.
Breaking and Exclusive from #Hanau #Germany , you can hear the ongoing gun shots in the background , this is terrifying! pic.twitter.com/aIN9Daf5Hi
— Steven Nabil (@thestevennabil) February 19, 2020
Katja Leikert, a parliamentarian for the Hanau constituency, wrote on social media that it was a “true horror scenario for us all.”
The motive for the shootings remains unclear.
Police have set up a hotline for members of the public with information that could lead to the suspects.
Germany has had several violent attacks in recent years one of which killed 12 people in the heart of Berlin in December 2016.
Far-right attacks have become a particular concern for German authorities.
In October, a deadly anti-Jewish gun attack in the eastern city of Halle on the holy day of Yom Kippur underscored the rising threat of neo-Nazi violence. The rampage, in which two people were shot dead, was streamed live.
Last June conservative politician Walter Luebcke, an advocate of a liberal refugee policy, was shot at his home.
On Friday police arrested 12 members of a German far-right group believed to have been plotting “shocking” large-scale attacks on mosques similar to the ones carried out in New Zealand last year.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
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