Konstanz: Identified as an Iraqi national, a man armed with M16 automatic US made rifle opened fire in a packed nightclub in southern Germany on Sunday. He killed a bouncer and injured 4 people before getting shot by the police.
The 34-year-old attacker “was critically injured in a shootout with police officers as he left the disco, and later succumbed to his wounds in hospital,” police said in a statement. “Nothing suggests that there could have been a terror background” to the attack at the club, said prosecutor Johannes-Georg Roth.
“Rather, everything points to a personal dispute that had escalated in an unspeakable manner,” he added reports AFP.
The attacker had been living in Germany since 1991, having obtained asylum status and had previous charges on him as well. He was the son-in-law of the owner of the nightclub.
Investigators said the man had initially left the site after a “fight with an employee at the disco”,
“He came back and shot dead the bouncer at the entrance area of the disco,” said Roth. He rained bullets on people of the night club, he added.
The gunman was then got shot by the police. The police had started receiving calls in the early morning when the shooting began.
An unnamed clubber was quoted by Suedkurier daily that he was in the washroom when someone came in and closed the toilet door saying there was shooting.
“I didn’t believe it and went out. But I heard shots and quickly ran back to the toilet and closed the door with another person. With us was a bouncer who was shot and he was bandaging the wound with a belt,” said the witness.
A bartender helped people to escape by opening the exit door, he said, adding that he saw another person with a wound in the leg lying on the grass by the parking lot.
The shooting in Konstanz, which borders Switzerland, came just two days after there was a knife attack in the northern port city of Hamburg.
Among the deadliest in recent years is a Munich shopping mall rampage last June by 18-year-old German-Iranian man which left 10 people dead including the gunman himself.