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Several killed in hospital shooting in Lörrach

Four people died and a police officer was seriously wounded on Sunday after an explosion and a shootout that ended at a hospital in the southwestern German town of Lörrach.

Published: 19 September 2010 21:02 CEST
Updated: 19 September 2010 22:31 CEST

Several killed in hospital shooting in Lörrach

Photo: DPA

The police said the woman responsible for the massacre had also been killed.

“The situation is now under control,” said a police spokesman.

The shooting started at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) at Saint Elizabeth hospital in the centre of Lörrach, which lies in Baden-Württemberg near Germany’s borders with France and Switzerland.

One police officer, who happened to be in the hospital as the woman began shooting, suffered life-threatening injuries. She also attacked the officers arriving on the scene before she was shot and killed.

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The authorities believe the shooter left a nearby apartment house where there was an explosion shortly before the massacre. A dead adult and child were later found in the building.

“At around 1600 GMT, firefighters were called out to an explosion at an apartment in a street near the hospital,” the spokesman told news agency AFP.

“Soon afterwards, firefighters found two bodies in the apartment.”

The incident comes only days after the manslaughter trial opened in Stuttgart Thursday of the father of Tim Kretschmer, the teenager who shot dead 15 people before killing himself at his old school in Baden-Württemberg in March 2009.

Jörg Kretschmer, a 51-year-old businessman, is accused of having violated gun laws because his 17-year-old son was able to take his 9mm Beretta pistol from his bedside to use in the shootings in the town of Winnenden.

AFP/DPA/The Local/mry

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Germany arrests Syrian man accused of plotting to kill soldiers

The suspect, an “alleged follower of a radical Islamic ideology”, was arrested on Thursday on charges of planning “a serious act of violence endangering the state”.

The man had acquired two heavy knives “around 40 centimetres (more than one foot) in length” in recent days, prosecutors in Munich said.

He planned to “attack Bundeswehr soldiers” in the city of Hof in northern Bavaria during their lunch break, aiming “to kill as many of them as possible”, prosecutors said.

“The accused wanted to attract attention and create a feeling of insecurity among the population,” they said.

German security services have been on high alert over the threat of Islamist attacks, in particular since the Gaza war erupted on October 7th with the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Police shot dead a man in Munich this month after he opened fire on officers in what was being treated as a suspected “terrorist attack” on the Israeli consulate in Munich.

The shootout fell on the anniversary of the kidnap and killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games by Palestinian militants.

The 18-year-old suspect had previously been investigated by authorities in his home country Austria on suspicion of links to terrorism but the case had been dropped.

The incident capped a string of attacks in Germany, which have stirred a sense of insecurity in Germany and fed a bitter debate of immigration.

Three people were killed last month in a suspected Islamist stabbing at a festival in the western city of Solingen.

READ ALSO: ‘Ban asylum seekers’ – How Germany is reacting to Solingen attack

The suspect in the attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, was a Syrian man who had been slated for deportation from Germany.

A federal interior ministry spokesman said if an Islamist motive was confirmed in the latest foiled attack, it would be “further evidence of the high threat posed by Islamist terrorism in Germany, which was recently demonstrated by the serious crimes in Mannheim and the attack in Solingen, but also by acts that were fortunately prevented by the timely intervention of the security authorities”.

The Solingen stabbing followed a knife attack in the city of Mannheim in May, which left a policeman dead, and which had also been linked to Islamism by officials.

Germany has responded to the attacks by taking steps to tighten immigration controls and knife laws.

READ ALSO: Debt, migration and the far-right – the big challenges facing Germany this autumn

The government has announced new checks along all of its borders and promised to speed up deportations of migrants who have no right to stay in Germany.

The number of people considered Islamist extremists in Germany fell slightly from 27,480 in 2022 to 27,200 last year, according to a report from the federal domestic intelligence agency.

But Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned in August that “the threat posed by Islamist terrorism remains high”.

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