Students killed in German

Students killed in German school shooting

Policemen in front of the crime scene at the Albertville-School Centre in Winnenden near Stuttgart, Germany Photograph: Sascha Baumann/Getty Images

A gunman dressed in a black combat uniform opened fire at a high school in southern Germany this morning, killing at least 15 people and injuring others before he was shot and killed by police.

The Deutsche Press-Agentur news agency said the killer was a 17-year-old former pupil from Albertville school in the Stuttgart suburb of Winnenden.

The Bild newspaper reported that the gunman was shot by police marksmen in a shopping centre in nearby Wendlingen.

He killed nine students and three teachers at the school, as well as one person at a nearby clinic.

In a shoot-out with police, two additional passers-by were killed and two police seriously injured, bringing the total death toll to 16 including the gunman, a police spokesman told Reuters.

"He went into the school with a weapon and carried out a bloodbath," said the regional police chief, Erwin Hetger. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."

The gunman entered the school at 9.30am (8.30am GMT) and opened fire at random before fleeing, police said. The school was then evacuated.

Police could not confirm media reports that the gunman was a former student at Albertville, but Germany's Bild newspaper said the 17-year-old had left the school two years ago. The paper reported that his parents had 18 weapons in their house. Armed police stormed the home and took his mother in for questioning, the paper said. The boy's father was a "wealthy businessman" from a neighbouring area, it said.

About 1,000 children attend the school in a suburb 12 miles (20km) north-east of Stuttgart.

"We have to anticipate a death toll in double digits," said a spokeswoman for the Stuttgart authorities.

German television said the gunman fled towards the centre of Winnenden. Reuters reported that helicopters circled above the town while rescue workers and firefighters were at the school. Witnesses told German media of hearing shots and screaming. One pupil said she first thought it was a joke, then saw her classmates jump out of windows before fleeing herself.

A police spokesperson told Bild the gunman shot a passerby near the psychiatric clinic in Winnenden. A worker from the clinic told the paper: "I heard six or seven shots. I am not allowed to leave my post."

Several school shootings have shocked Germany in recent years. In 2006, a masked man wearing explosives and brandishing rifles opened fire at a school in the western German town of Emsdetten, wounding at least 11 people before killing himself.

In April 2002, Germany saw its worst school shooting when a gunman killed 16 people, before turning the gun on himself, at a high school in the eastern city of Erfurt.

source:www.guardian.co.uk