Police hunt cafe gunmen
GENEVA: Swiss police are hunting for two gunmen who burst into a cafe in city of Basel and opened fire, killing two people and seriously injuring a third.
No details were released on the suspects or victims, and prosecutors said the motive for the attack, in a small cafe in a residential neighourhood, was not known.
“Two men came into Cafe 56” around 8.15pm local time [12.15am yesterday Thai time] and fired several rounds,” said police in the picturesque city on the Rhine river in northwestern Switzerland.
“Two customers were killed. Another is in a critical condition,” they said in a statement.
The assailants escaped and headed in the direction of a city railway station after the attack.
“The reason behind the attack is not yet known and will be investigated,” the Basel prosecutor’s office said.
One neighbourhood resident said the cafe “was previously an establishment known for its links to the drug world”. “But since the owner changed several years ago it became an ordinary cafe,” the resident told local newspaper Basler Zeitung.
The road next to the cafe was cordoned off and traffic redirected. A photographer at the scene saw police dressed in white forensic garb collecting evidence at the site early yesterday. A bullet hole was visible in one of the windows of the cafe.
Gun crime is infrequent in Switzerland, even though the country has one of the highest rates of firearm ownership in the world.
Citizens are allowed to keep their armyissue weapons at home outside periods of mandatory military service.
This right has been controversial as sometimes weapons are used at home in domestic incidents.