“Many shots were fired, I can’t say how many but it’s been a lot”, the employee hiding in the mall, who declined to be identified, told Reuters by telephone. On social media people have been posting pictures of police helicopters in the air in the area. Another video posted online shows a gunman emerging from the door of the McDonald’s, raising what appears to be a pistol with both hands, and aiming at people on the sidewalk, firing as they flee in terror.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel will be joined by the German defence minister, vice-chancellor, foreign minister, justice minister, finance minister, development minister and interior minister.
Munich police said on Facebook that witnesses reported three different gunmen armed with rifles.
Witness Luan Zequiri said he was in the mall when the shooting began. “This can not continue. The rise of terrorism threatens the way of life for all civilized people, and we must do everything in our power to keep it from our shores”. “We can’t confirm them, but we are investigating along those lines too”.
Altmaier said numerous attacks had been prevented in Germany in recent years “but, and this is important, there can never be absolute security”.
The city of Munich sent a smartphone alert telling people to stay indoors and German rail company Deutsche Bahn stopped train traffic to Munich’s main station.
Federal Minister for Special Affairs, Peter Altmaier, who will also be at the meeting, said: “We are determined to do all we can so that terrorism and misanthropic violence have no chance in Germany”.
The shopping centre is next to the Munich Olympic stadium, where the Palestinian militant group Black September took 11 Israeli athletes hostage and eventually killed them during the 1972 Olympic Games.
“All the people from outside came streaming into the store and I only saw one person on the ground who was so severely injured that he definitely didn´t survive,”We have no further information, we´re just staying in the back in the storage rooms”.
Germany has so far escaped the kind of large-scale jihadist attacks seen in neighbouring France and the motives and identities of the gunmen were not yet known.
U.S. President Barack Obama reacted to the shooting on Friday afternoon, but stressed that: “We don’t yet know exactly what’s happening there, but obviously our hearts go out to those who may have been injured”.
Munich police spokeswoman Claudia Kuenzel told The Associated Press there had been “several dead and wounded” in the shooting at Olympia Einkaufszentrum mall.
Yesterday was also the five-year anniversary of the massacre by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway. She could not provide exact numbers. They said a body found near the scene was that of the shooter and he appeared to have acted alone.
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“The situation is still completely confusing”, Thomas Baumann, a deputy spokesman of the Munich police, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur, the German news agency.
