Authorities were sweeping the city and advising residents to avoid public places, according to Agence France Presse. “It depends on the men and women in uniform ever single day, who are under some of the most adverse circumstances imaginable at times making sure to keep us safe”. ISIS claimed responsibility for it. On Friday, the cat photos were not only meant to cheer people up but keep them from posting information about where authorities may be located in Munich as they hunted for the gunmen.
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Attacks such as the one in a Munich shopping mall and at a nearby McDonald’s Friday may lead mall owners to increase their security or even persuade global brands to focus expansion plans on the USA rather than Europe.
Munich has large communities of people who fled the Balkan wars in the 1990s. The previous attacks, in the French resort city of Nice and on a train in Bavaria near the city of Wuerzburg, were claimed by the Islamic State group.
The force tweeted that the situation is “confusing” and warned people to avoid public spaces in the city. Facts were scarce, though Deutsche Welle reported police were still helping people out of the Olympia-Einkaufszentrum.
Another video posted online showed a gunman emerging from the door of the McDonald’s, raising what appeared to be a pistol with both hands and aiming at people on the sidewalk, firing as they fled in terror.
With still no official figure on casualties in the shooting spree Friday night, July 22, in the Olympia mall, Munich’s largest shopping center. And so a city of 1,5 million was sent into panic by muddled, stammering statements, which for hours refrained from defining the mall attack, locked the entries against the media and refused to specify the number of casualties.
The incident appeared to be ongoing.
“Many shots were fired, I can’t say how many but it’s been a lot”, said a shop worker hiding in a store room inside the mall.
“It’s important that you target the people who are involved and don’t go after people who may not be your enemy, but you can motivate them to become that and that’s the last thing the security needs to do in Germany right now”.
“I come out of the toilet and I hear like an alarm, boom, boom, boom”.
There has not been a single report of accidents for the Iranian nationals, Qadiri noted.
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It is not clear whether any of the people seen in the video were shot.
