An 18-year-old German-Iranian from Munich has been identified as the lone suspect who shot up a mall in the German city on Friday, killing at least nine people and injuring about 21.
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Munich police said the shooter was a German-Iranian 18-year-old from Munich whose motive was “completely unclear”. On Monday as five people were injured and over a dozen left in shock after an axe and knife-wielding man assaulted passengers on a train near the town of Würzburg. Police gave a “cautious all clear” in the pre-dawn hours Saturday, more than seven hours after the attack began and brought much of the city to a standstill as all public transit systems were shut down amid a massive manhunt.
A police spokesperson said “the shooting looks like a terror attack”.
Retail industry experts also said that at this point big iconic brands don’t appear to be the targets – it’s just that many of them happen to be at public places that are vulnerable to attacks.
“The shooter or shooters are still on the run” either in or around the mall, she said.
The statements come one day after Trump painted a foreboding picture of the USA in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, when he spoke of police killings, murders committed by undocumented immigrants and the threat of terrorism on United States soil.
Altmaier noted that Friday was the fifth anniversary of the massacre in Oslo, Norway, by a far-right extremist that killed 77 people, 69 of them at a youth summer camp.
Authorities said it was too early to say whether it was a terrorist attack, and said they had no immediate evidence of an Islamist motive. That body was not found in the mall but police did not say exactly where it was. Witnesses had reported seeing three men with firearms near the Olympia Einkaufszentrum mall, but Andrae said two other people who fled the area were investigated but had “nothing to do with the incident”.
“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, speaking before the nine deaths were confirmed.
According to CNN, “On the basis of witness reports and CCTV footage” a man found dead near the scene is considered to be the suspect.
After the 2013 attack at a mall in Nairobi that killed dozens, the mall trade group – which represents about one third of retail space globally – said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reached out to corporate security at all malls.
Around 2,300 police officers were deployed on the city’s streets and specialist counter-terror units were flown in.
The Olympia mall is near the stadium for the 1972 Olympics and the athletes’ village, which was the site of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by the Palestinian Black September group.
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The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, claimed responsibility for the train attack, but authorities have said the teen likely acted alone.
