Local police say no one was harmed by the suspect at the Kinopolis cinema, though local media reported that up to 50 people had been injured by tear gas.
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Peter Beuth told the state of Hessen’s parliament that police stormed the Kinopolis complex in Viernheim, near Frankfurt, after shots were reported.
“At this moment in time we have no information on injured persons”, the shopping center said on its Facebook page.
Heavily armed police converge on a movie theatre in Viernheim, Germany.
Police from nearby Darmstadt said on Thursday that there was no evidence of an Islamist background behind the attack.
Christiane Kobus, a spokesperson for South Hessen Police, said: “Officers entered the cinema and were able to locate the man and the people he was holding”. The caller said there was a masked man.armed with a long gun. The man reportedly fired his weapon into the air once he entered the theater.
Police spokesperson Bernd Hochstaedter said that the police deployment lasted around three hours.
The police said that they now have no leads linking the man to radical Islam, and other motives are being looked into.
Germany’s Interior Ministry confirmed that the gunman has been shot dead.
Cinema employee Guri Blakaj told Reuters the gunman, who appeared to be aged between 18 and 25, told workers to get into an office.
There have been a number of mass shootings in Germany over the past decade, though gun control in the country is stringent.
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The motive of the attack is unclear. Some 23,000 people shop at this collection of 110 shops each day, according to the mall’s website. We will update this post as more reports come in.
