German police on Saturday appealed to members of the public to submit video and picture evidence after the gunman – who was born in Munich and held dual German-Iranian citizenship – caused mad panic around the Bavarian capital.
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Germany’s Interior Ministry said Munich police had set up a hotline for concerned citizens. Police found a book in his apartment called “Amok im Kopf: Warum Schüler Töten”, which translates as “Rampage in the Head: Why Students Kill”.
“There has been a suggestion that this individual, the perpetrator, had tried to lure people to that fast food restaurant with the promise that he will buy food for them”, said Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane, reporting from Berlin.
“We don’t yet know exactly what’s happening there, but obviously our hearts go out to those who may have been injured”, he said from the White House.
A police patrol shot and wounded the gunman but he managed to escape before police found the body of what they believed was the “only shooter”.
They lived in the well-heeled Maxvorstadt neighbourhood in a tidy social housing block popular with immigrant families.
“But whether the acts or the motivation of those killers inspired the Munich shooter is still under investigation”, the minister said, as Soraya reported.
Munich Police Chief Andrae said the assailant had used a 9mm Glock pistol and had some 300 rounds of ammunition.
A cell-phone video posted online showed the person filming from a balcony engaging verbally with the suspect dressed in black standing on the rooftop of the mall parking structure.
After gunfire broke out at the mall, one of Munich’s largest, the city sent a smartphone alert declaring an “emergency situation” and telling people to stay indoors, while all rail, subway and trolley service was halted in the city.
Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae said: “Breivik would have played a role”.
Chancellor Angela Merkel will convene her security council on Saturday to address the deadly rampage in the European economic powerhouse which took in more than one million migrants and refugees past year.
One witness said the gunman cursed foreigners while carrying out his attack and was overheard yelling: “You damn foreigners”.
He also discounted earlier fears that there were up to three gunmen involved in the attack that were triggered by two bystanders fleeing in a vehicle at “considerable speed”. “I’m German” the suspected attacker said before eventually firing shots. “First I thought someone had thrown some firecrackers. I don’t accept any of this violence”. All were residents of Munich, he said. He then traveled to a summer camp for young left-of-center political activists on the island of Utoeya, where he killed another 69 people.
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“We are mourning those who will never go back to their families”, she said, before addressing the bereaved families of the victims of Munich’s “night of horrors”. “He had a job distributing a free newspaper, Munchener Wochenblatt, but I often saw him rather than deliver them, throw them all away into the garbage bin”, Baumanns added. “Our city stands united”, he said.
