Four, including shooter, die in German hospital rampage

LOERRACH - A shooting rampage that began in an apartment block and continued in a hospital in Germany ended Sunday with four people dead, including the female assailant, police said.

Police were still piecing together what happened in the sudden flurry of violence in the centre of Loerrach, a town just over the border from the Swiss city of Basle.

Witnesses heard shots in the apartments and there was an explosion. The bodies of a middle-aged man and a small girl were later found there.

Firefighters who rushed to the scene withdrew when they saw an armed woman at the apartment block.

Spraying bullets with an automatic weapon, she then ran into to the neighbouring St Elisabeth Hospital.

In the course of a shootout with police, she fatally wounded a male nurse and critically wounded an off-duty policeman who happened to be inside the hospital. Police then shot the assailant dead.

There was pandemonium and dread in the maternity and children’s clinic as police with automatic weapons fanned out through sick wards and began evacuating patients. Hundreds of heavily armed police poured into the town, population 55,000, to secure it.

The injured policeman’s wounds included a gunshot through his knee.

The gunwoman’s identity and motive were unclear, nor was it immediately clear if she was related to any of the victims.