Munich mall shooting: What we know

Special police forces prepare to search a neighboring shopping center outside the Olympia mall in Munich, southern Germany, Friday, July 22, 2016 after several people have been killed in a shooting. AP

MUNICH, Germany–Nine people were killed and nearly two dozen wounded in a shooting rampage at a Munich shopping center.

Investigators found the body of the suspected shooter, who appears to have acted alone and then killed himself.

Police say the gunman was a German-Iranian 18-year-old who was not previously known to police.

READ: Several dead in Munich shopping center shooting rampage, say police

Here is what we know:

What happened?

A shooter opened fire at a McDonald’s restaurant and continued onto a street before entering the Olympia (OEZ) mall near the Olympic stadium in Munich.

The shooting started shortly before 1600 GMT, with authorities initially saying witnesses reported seeing three gunmen.

Police said the man likely acted alone.

Nine people were killed in the shooting that began early Friday evening, with 21 injured including children.

A video posted on social media appeared to show a man dressed in black walking away from the McDonald’s while firing repeatedly on people as they fled.

Authorities evacuated the main train station in the city of some 1.4 million, while metro and bus transport services were suspended in the wake of the assault, but have since resumed.

The shopping centre, which opened in the 1970s and bills itself as Bavaria’s biggest, was surrounded by armed police, while a helicopter buzzed overhead.

The Olympia mall is near the stadium for the 1972 Olympics and the athletes’ village, which was the site of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by the Palestinian Black September group.

People leave the Olympia mall in Munich, southern Germany, Friday, July 22, 2016 after several people have been killed in a shooting. AP

Who was the gunman?

Munich police said the shooter was a German-Iranian 18-year-old from Munich whose motive was “completely unclear”.

“The perpetrator was an 18-year-old German-Iranian from Munich,” police chief Hubertus Andrae told reporters after the rampage.

READ: ‘Lone’ Munich shooter kills nine, commits suicide

The shooter had dual citizenship and “no criminal record”.

“The motive or explanation for this crime is completely unclear,” he added.

A police spokesman had earlier told AFP they suspected “terrorism” in the rampage, while German news agency DPA quoted police as warning of an “acute terror situation”.

Europe has been on alert in the wake of a string of attacks including bombings in neighboring France and Belgium.

The carnage came on the fifth anniversary of right-wing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik’s massacre in Norway that killed 77 people.

Train attacks

The violence happened just days after a teenage asylum seeker went on a rampage with an axe and a knife on a regional train in Germany on Monday, injuring five people, two of them critically.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the teenager was believed to be a “lone wolf” attacker who appeared to have been “inspired” by the Islamic State group but was not a member of the jihadist network.

The assailant had arrived as an unaccompanied minor in Germany in June 2015 and had been staying with a foster family in the region of the attack for the last two weeks.

In May, a mentally unstable 27-year-old man carried out a knife attack on a regional train just southeast of Munich, killing one person and injuring three others.

Migrant influx

Bavaria became the main gateway for hundreds of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers arriving in Germany.

Hate crimes and attacks against migrants exploded after arrivals spiked to more than one million last year, mostly from the Middle East and Africa.

Some 923 offences against refugee shelters were reported in 2015, compared to 175 the previous year, according to figures from the interior ministry.

Of these, 177 were acts of violence, up from 26 in 2014.