Seventeen dead in German school shooting, including Turkish student

The toll rose from 16 after a pupil wounded in the shootout died in hospital, a police spokesman said. Â

 

Ten students, three teachers and three passers-by were among those killed in the shooting spree at the secondary school in Winnenden.

 

After armed commandos with helicopters and dogs then launched a massive hunt for the 17-year-old gunman, police sources told AFP that he was then killed in a fire-fight with police.Â

German media reports earlier said that the gunmen, identified as Tim Kretschmer, had shot himself dead in the car park of a nearby shopping centre after kidnapping a man and his Volkswagen Sharan car and driven through a police barrier towards the motorway.

 

"The gunman just sprayed bullets all around him," N-TV cited an unnamed witness as saying. A local radio journalist told the same channel that the ex-pupil had used a machine gun during his rampage.

 

The reporter of the Turkish broadcaster at the scene said two police officers were seriously injured during the clash with Kretschmer.

 

GERMANY IN MOURNING

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany was in mourning after the incident.

 

"Like all people in Germany, I find what happened today in the Albertville-Realschule in Winnenden incomprehensible," Merkel said in a short statement.

 

"It is a day of mourning for the whole of Germany. Our thoughts go out to the families and relatives. We are thinking of you and we are praying for you," she was quoted by AFP as saying.

 

The Bild daily said on its website that police commandos had stormed the home of the teenager's parents, where 18 weapons were legally held.

It was not immediately clear whether the gunman used any these guns in his attack.Â

The picturesque town of Winnenden, which lies around 25 kilometres (15 miles) northeast of the city of Stuttgart in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, has around 27,000 inhabitants.

 

The Albertville technical high school in Winnenden was evacuated immediately after the incident. About 1,000 children, including many students of Turkish origin, attend the school located in a suburb some 12 miles (20 kilometers) northeast of Stuttgart.