Patient shoots doctor dead at Berlin hospital, before killing self: Police

A police car is parked in front of the university clinic in Steglitz, on July 26, 2016, after a doctor had been shot at and the gunman had killed himself. PHOTO: REUTERS
German police said shots were fired at a university clinic in Steglitz at around 1100 GMT on Tuesday (July 26). PHOTO: REUTERS

BERLIN (AFP, REUTERS) - A patient shot a doctor before committing suicide at a Berlin hospital on Tuesday (July 26), police said, adding there was no sign the incident was a terrorist attack.

A police spokeswoman told AFP that several shots were fired at a university hospital in the well-heeled southwestern Steglitz neighbourhood of the German capital.

"According to preliminary information, a patient at the hospital shot a doctor and then killed himself," she said.
Police in Berlin said on Twitter the patient had died.

The police added that they had no indications that anyone else was injured or that there were any other perpetrators.

They said the situation at the Benjamin Franklin campus of the Charite university hospital was now "under control" and investigators were on the scene to determine the background to the crime.

The shooting came with Germany already on edge after four brutal attacks in the south of the country.

A Syrian asylum seeker blew himself up outside a music festival and wounded 15 other people in Ansbach on Sunday, six days after four passengers on a train and a passer-by were wounded in an axe attack by another asylum seeker in Wuerzburg on July 18.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group claimed both attacks.

On Friday, nine people were killed in a shopping centre shooting spree in Munich by a German-Iranian teenager with a history of psychological problems but no apparent links to militants.

And a Syrian refugee killed a 45-year-old Polish woman with a large kebab knife Sunday at a snack bar in the southwestern city of Reutlingen.

Police concluded that the incident, in which three others were injured, was likely a "crime of passion".

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.