FRANKFURT: A 26-year-old man is believed to have shot dead his mother and father and four other people in a town in southwest Germany on Friday, police said, leaving two others seriously wounded.

The suspect “called the police station in (nearby town) Aalen at 12:48pm to inform them he had shot several people,” police chief Reiner Moeller told reporters in a press conference hours after the killings in Rot am See, near Baden-Wuerttemberg state capital Stuttgart.

The young man stayed on the line, and when the first officers arrived minutes later at the hotel where the shooting took place, they immediately arrested him outside.

“They were then able to identify six dead people both inside and behind the building,” Moeller said, including three men aged 36, 65 and 69 and three women aged 36, 56 and 62.

Images from the scene showed large numbers of emergency vehicles and heavily armed officers sealing off the area with red and white police tape.

Meanwhile, forensics teams dressed in white coveralls moved in to secure evidence.

Two survivors of the attack were receiving medical treatment, with one of them “in danger for his life”, police chief Moeller said.

The shooter had also threatened two children aged 12 and 14, leaving them shaken but unharmed.

Investigators have so far been unable to discover anything about the motive of the suspect, saying he would be questioned only when his lawyer arrived at the police station.

So far the police have been able to confirm only that two of the dead were the suspect’s father and mother. “We are still clarifying the other relationships” between the group, Moeller said.

The perpetrator himself, a German citizen, lived in the hotel along with some of the victims, near the station in the town of 5,200 people.

German media had earlier reported that the group had met in the hotel for a family gathering, but police have so far been unable to confirm this.

Investigators say the crime was committed with a semi-automatic handgun, for which the suspect held a licence for sport shooting.

The weapon was found inside the building after officers arrested the 26-year-old man.

While owning firearms is not illegal in Germany, most guns can be acquired only with a licence and they are closely monitored, making mass shootings comparatively rare.

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2020