2 people dead

GERMANY - A discotheque shooting in Constance in southwestern Germany has left two people dead, including a patron, say police. The attacker died after a subsequent shootout. Police have ruled out terrorism. Police in Germany’s southwestern state of BadenWürttemberg said the 34-year-old alleged perpetrator of Sunday’s pre-dawn shooting had died of wounds after leaving the nightclub and ending up in a shootout with officers.

A terrorist motive was ruled out by a police spokesman, who said the incident appeared to have been a crime of passion by a sole perpetrator.

Three other persons inside the venue had been injured as well as a police officer hurt during the later shootout. The officer’s wounds were not life-threatening, police said.

They declined to confirm multiple reports that the dead suspect was an Iraqi who had Police and ambulances stand near the disco Club Grey. (Photo: afp) long lived in Constance and was not an asylum seeker. The multi-story nightclub, Club Grey, is located in an industrial zone about one kilometer from Constance’s small airport. Multiple emergency phone calls had been received around 4:30 a.m., local time, police said. “Guests were able to save themselves by fleeing outside or hiding,” the spokesman added. The region’s German public broadcaster SWR initially quoted eyewitnesses as saying that a doorman was hit by shots from a semi-automatic pistol as he tried to resist the alleged perpetrator. Eyewitnesses quoted by the German news agency DPA said, once inside, the perpetrator shot indiscriminately at guests over “several minutes”.

“The discotheque was packed. I reckon there were hundreds of people there,” the witness said, adding that he and friends fled immediately.

DPA said special police units rushed to the scene in the German city of 83,000 inhabitants, which lies directly on Germany’s southern border with Switzerland, not knowing whether the incident involved a single or multiple attackers.

Germany remains on edge, after a fatal rampage in Hamburg on Friday. A rejected asylum seeker killed one person and injured six others while armed with a knife seized at a Hamburg supermarket.

Hamburg authorities later said he was an Islamist due for deportation and known to police as psychologically unstable.

(dw)