He said there is no reason to believe the shooter had any accomplices.
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Witnesses had reported seeing three men with firearms near the Olympia Einkaufszentrum mall, but police said on Twitter that “as part of our manhunt we found a person who had killed himself – the person is likely to have been the attacker who, according to the current state of the investigation, acted alone”.
Police spent hours scouring the city for suspected gunmen after the shooting – 2,300 police were mobilized, Andrae said. He said he hid in a shop, then ran outside when the coast was clear and saw bodies of the dead and wounded on the ground.
Police have closed off a wide area around a large Munich shopping center after shots were fired, a spokeswoman for the police said on Friday, APA reports quoting Reuters.
A video posted online, whose authenticity could not be confirmed, showed a man dressed in black outside a McDonalds by the roadside, drawing a handgun and shooting towards members of the public.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel 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. “It’s still an active situation, and 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”, Obama said. “But, and this became clear again today, we can’t talk down this danger”.
“The shooting moved from that street to the shopping centre”. In all there were 2,300 officers involved, including the elite GSG9, and SWAT teams from other German states and from neighbouring Austria.
German President Joachim Gauck said he was “horrified” by the “murderous attack”, while Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, who was on a flight to NY when the shooting began, will return to Germany.
The mall is not far from the Olympic stadium which hosted the 1972 summer Games and the athletes’ village, the site of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by the Palestinian Black September group. It also comes just days after a teenage asylum seeker went on a rampage with an axe and a knife on a regional train on Monday near Wuerzburg, also in Bavaria, injuring five people. Sixteen people were injured, including three serious and 13 not serious.
All survived, although one man from the train remains in a life-threatening condition.
The attack took place on the fifth anniversary of the lone wolf terrorist attacks by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway in which 77 people were killed. Islamic State claimed responsibility for that attack.
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The incidents in Germany follow an attack in Nice, France, on July 14 in which a Tunisian drove a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day, killing 84. Firearm ownership is widespread but they are strictly regulated, with purchasers first having to take training courses in order to be granted a permit to own one.
