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9 Dead in Munich Attack, Police Say

Police spoke of an 'acute state of terror' in the southern German city after the shooting at its Olympia shopping center resulted in a series of evacuations and a widespread state of panic across the city.

WORLD NEWS MUNICH-SHOOTING 3 ZUM
Special forces officers arrive at the Olympia shopping center where a shooting was reported with several people being killed July 22, 2016 in Munich, Germany. Terrorism is suspected, police say. The suspect is still at large.
TNS
(TNS) - BERLIN — Nine people have been killed in a terrorist shooting in Munich, police said late Friday. A tenth body found near the scene is likely the perpetrator.

Police spoke of an "acute state of terror" in the southern German city after the shooting at its Olympia shopping center resulted in a series of evacuations and a widespread state of panic across the city.

An initial examination of the ninth body, found about a mile away from the shopping center, showed he had died a violent death, police said.

Munich authorities have activated the country's GSG 9 counterterrorism unit and asked for reinforcement from police units across the country.

"We are trying to get the situation under control. We don't know where the perpetrators are," Thomas Baumann, the deputy spokesman of the Munich police department, told dpa earlier on Friday.

Munich authorities asked residents not to leave their houses and to avoid public places. The city's central train station was evacuated and public transportation was brought to a halt.

The shooting started at 5:52 p.m. local time at a McDonald's in the shopping center, according to Baumann. Police and emergency vehicles could be seen outside the shopping center and helicopters were flying over the city.

There have been no other terrorist incidents in Munich, police said, refuting reports in German media about an incident at Karlsplatz square, also known as Stachus, near the city center.

The German government called a crisis meeting at the chancellery in Berlin, but Chancellor Angela Merkel was not yet in attendance, chancellery sources told dpa.

The country's national security council, headed by Merkel, will meet in Berlin on Saturday, her chief of staff Peter Altmaier said.

Germany has been on high alert since Monday, when an Islamist asylum seeker injured five people in a knife-and-axe attack on a commuter train headed to the southern city of Wuerzburg.

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©2016 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany)

Visit Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) at www.dpa.de/English.82.0.html

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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PHOTOS (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): GERMANY-ATTACKS

GRAPHIC (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): Germany attacks

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