Special police forces prepare to search a neighbouring shopping centre outside the Olympia mall in Munich, southern Germany, on Friday, July 22, 2016 after several people have been killed in a shooting.
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The suspect in the attack on a shopping mall in Munich on Friday is an 18-year-old German-Iranian high school student who lived in Munich and had a history of depression, Munich police said.
Thomas Steinkraus-Koch, spokesman for Munich prosecutor’s office, said there was still no evidence of any political motivation to the crime, nor that the shooter killed specific victims.
The fact that most of the dead were so young added to what Chancellor Angela Merkel called “an evening and night of horror”.
Born and raised in the German, city he murdered nine people and 27 injured others – 10 of them in a critical condition, including a 13-year-old boy.
The overnight investigation had made it clear that the shooter had acted alone before killing himself, he said.
The spokesman for Munich prosecutors’ office says the teenage gunman who killed nine people in the city on Friday had received psychiatric treatment previous year.
He said there was no reason not to visit Munich or to cancel events for security reasons. Munich’s police chief spoke of links to the massacre by Norway’s Anders Behring Breivik. Then, in front of two police officers, he killed himself with his own gun, the police said.
Sonboly’s rampage at a Munich shopping mall on Friday sparked a terror alert, with fears that Germany had followed France and Belgium this year in becoming targets of the Islamic State (IS) group. He added that material found at the shooter’s home showed he had likely obtained his Glock 17 pistol illegally through the internet’s “dark net” market, and was an avid player of first-person shooter video games like “Counter-Strike”.
Sedik Ali, a 29-year-old neighbour originally from Afghanistan, remembered Sonboly as a lonely teenager who rarely hung out with the other neighbourhood lads.
There are at least 16 people, including children, receiving treatment at a hospital.
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Three of the victims were young enthnic Albanians, prompting Kosovo President Hashim Thaci to declare Sunday a day of mourning. “Our city stands united”.
