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Breaking News: Munich Under Terror Attack by CzarChris(m): 11:15pm On Jul 22, 2016
Munich was in lockdown on Friday night after a gunman killed at least eight people in a crowded shopping centre and injured several others, and police stopped trains, emptied highways and ordered citizens to stay in their homes as they hunted up to three attackers feared to be at large in the city.

Munich police said they had found a ninth body at the scene of the shooting. They said that one person had taken their own life and were trying to verify if this was an attacker.

The violence began just before 6pm, when one attacker opened fire at a McDonald’s outside the Olympia shopping centre, near the site of the Munich Olympic Games.

Video apparently shot outside the restaurant showed passersby fleeing in terror as a gunman with a pistol surveyed the street then calmly and indiscriminately opened fire as terrified bystanders raced for cover.

Witness footage shows moment gunman opens fire in Munich
The emergency services raced to the site within minutes, but the gunmen vanished from the scene, sparking hours of panic across the city and anguish outside the shopping centre, where people held a desperate vigil for loved ones trapped inside.

“My 23-year-old daughter was part of a group that locked themselves inside H&M to protect themselves. I spoke to her over the phone and she was crying, but then her battery ran out,” said one father, weeping himself as he kept his vigil.

He asked not to be named because of fears for his daughter.

Police told Reuters that they suspected the shooting was a terror attack, but did not have any details on the identity or motive of any gunmen.

Related: Munich shooting: police hunt continues as death toll rises to nine - live

Asked if this was a terror attack, a police spokesman said: “If a man with a gun in a shopping centre opens fire and eight people are dead, we have to work on the assumption that this was not a normal crime and was a terrorist act.”

Within an hour of the initial attack, false rumours of other shootings in at least three other places sparked panic across the city. German police warned people to stay away from public places and asked them not to share photos or video of police action to avoid helping any suspects on the run.

All trains and transport within and leading into and out of the Bavarian state capital were diverted and the city was closed to traffic.

Cars on the autobahn around Munich were asked to exit it, in order to free up the road for emergency vehicles. Hospitals were on emergency alert with staff, including doctors, surgeons and nurses called in to await any casualties.

Among the parts of the city to be evacuated was Munich central station. People were reported to have screamed and scrambled over railway platforms as the police ordered them to leave the station.


Satellite view of the Olympia einkaufszentrum (shopping centre) and nearby U-Bahn station. Photograph: Google Maps
Police and ambulance crews were on site within minutes. At least one attacker was believed to have fled the shopping centre and headed for a metro station.

Munich residents responded by sharing pictures of pets and other cuddly animals under the hashtag for the attack, and offering those stranded in the city a place to stay.

Witnesses also reported hearing shots inside and outside the shopping mall, known locally as the OEZ. “I was shopping when I heard three shots, then we ran out and about 40 seconds later we heard five shots from outside,” said Florian Horn, 33.

“The shooter or shooters are still on the run” either in or around the mall, Claudia Kuenzel, told the Associated Press. Staff in the mall were still in hiding more than an hour after the attack, an employee told Reuters by telephone. “Many shots were fired. I can’t say how many, but it’s been a lot,” the employee, who declined to be identified, said.

“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.
Re: Breaking News: Munich Under Terror Attack by CzarChris(m): 11:16pm On Jul 22, 2016
We have no further information, we’re just staying in the back in the storage rooms. No police have approached us yet.”

Cansu Muyan, who lives near the Olympia shopping centre, said she had been inside with her sister when the attack began. “I suddenly saw everyone running past. Then a shopkeeper told us all to leave as quickly as possible so we all started running as well,” she said.

A man who worked at a nearby petrol station said there had been chaos outside the centre. “We see just ambulances and firemen and police, but all this area is evacuated, all the streets,” he told the BBC. “Now [there] are no cars just on the side of the streets.

“All of the streets are blocked. I see that the people are scared. Everybody is running around.”

One entrance into the mall leads directly from a subway, and shoppers milling around outside the building after it was evacuated said they thought the gunman might have entered that way before leaving by a second exit.

Play Video
People flee Munich shopping centre amid gunshots
The Olympia shopping centre is a two-tiered glass-covered mall that was built on the site of the 1972 Olympics.

The Munich Games were overshadowed by a terrorist attack in which 11 Israeli sportsmen and a German policeman were killed after being taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists.

It is the second attack in Bavaria in less than a week. Security forces have been on high alert after a teenage refugee attacked train passengers near the city of Würzburg with an axe and a knife, leaving two people in intensive care.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the train attack, but authorities have said the attacker was likely to have acted alone.

The Foreign Office issued an alert warning British citizens in Munich to follow the instructions of the authorities.

Speaking at the UN in New York, Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, said: “Everybody is shocked and saddened by what has taken place. Our thoughts are very much with the victims, their families, with the people of Munich.”

“If, as seems very likely, this is another terrorist incident, then I think it proves once again that we have a global phenomenon now and a global sickness that we have to tackle both at source – in the areas where the cancer is being incubated in the middle east – and also of course around the world.”

Citizens were warned to stay in their homes via the smart phone warning system Katwarn.

Germany’s elite unit, the SAS equivalent GSG9, was flown in. Armed and masked but dressed otherwise unassumingly in T-shirts, trainers and shorts they were spotted in the vicinity of the local police who were on the scene within minutes of the first emergency call having been received.

Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Hermann, and Bavaria’s prime minister, Horst Seehofer, were meeting on Friday in Munich’s state chancellery for a crisis meeting. With the city in lockdown and armed elite police poised on rooftops at locations around Munich, some older Germans were forced to recall the days when the country was terrorised by the urban guerilla movement Baader Meinhof gang or Red Army Faction (RAF).

Source :https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/22/munich-shopping-centre-evacuated-after-reported-shooting-germany
Re: Breaking News: Munich Under Terror Attack by Ratello: 11:22pm On Jul 22, 2016
But what's really going on? Life is too sweet for some bastards to be wasting others lives. Rest in peace to the dead.
Re: Breaking News: Munich Under Terror Attack by mira4u: 11:53pm On Jul 22, 2016
Somebody prophesied something like this I remember.
Re: Breaking News: Munich Under Terror Attack by Flyingngel(m): 11:56pm On Jul 22, 2016
One thing I don't understand is y some people will decide to take another persons life; something they cannot create. This world may b coming to and end slowly. God give me d grace to examine my llife daily. RIP to d death.

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