Munich: It was a typically busy Friday rush hour in Munich's underprivileged north-west.
The mid-summer sun was out, the working week was over, and people ducked into the Olympia-Einkaufszentrum shopping centre to pick up supplies on the way home. Others were starting the weekend with some evening retail therapy at the mall's department stores.
Just before 6pm, the quiet hum of suburban commerce was broken by gunfire.
A lone gunman, bearded and dressed in black, opened fire inside a McDonald's restaurant on busy Hanauer Street, a main road through the Moosach neighbourhood.
A witness said he loaded the gun in the restaurant's bathroom before starting to shoot at diners. Initial reports suggested four people were killed inside the restaurant and a fifth was fatally shot outside.
Video posted on the internet shows pedestrians walking slowly, apparently unconcerned, towards the man on the street outside the restaurant before he raises a handgun and repeatedly fires. The pedestrians scream and scatter as the gun is fired about 20 times.
It is unclear from the video whether the pedestrians, some barely a couple of metres away as he opened fire, were hit.
The shooter crossed the road to the shopping centre, less than 30 seconds walk away. An eye witness report on German TV said the gunman yelled "f---ng foreigners" as he open fire inside the mall, which is about a kilometre away from the stadium and athletes' village the terror-stained 1972 Olympics. Another video showed him firing from the roof of a nearby carpark.
By the time he was finished, nine were dead and at least 20 injured, three critically. A woman at the scene told CNN there was "blood everywhere" in the restaurant. "He was killing the children," she said.
Early reports said there may have been three attackers, but police later confirmed two people seen speeding from the scene in a car were not involved. Two plainclothes police offers in the area arrived at the scene and opened fire on the suspected shooter, but he escaped on foot. He was found dead in a nearby side street about 8.30pm, apparently from a self-inflicted gun wound to the head, though police said that was unconfirmed.
In the minutes after the shooting streets around the shopping centre were overrun with police and paramedics. Police helicopters buzzed over the Bavarian capital, and elite border security unit forces were flown in. Police said 2300 officers, including some from Austria, were deployed.
As news of the shooting spread, there was panic across the city, exacerbated by several false alarms posted on social media suggesting there had been shootings in other parts of the city and hostages were being held. Police later said they were incorrect, but warned 1.4 million people who live in Munich to stay indoors.
The subway and train system were quickly shutdown to prevent the killer or killers using them to escape. It stranded people across the city, and heightened the sense of unease.
On Facebook and Twitter, people started using the hashtag #offenetueren – open doors – to indicate they were offering safehaven for those who couldn't get home. The Four Seasons hotel was among those to throw its doors open for anyone needing shelter. An eerie quiet descended over the city as the streets were deserted.
Speculation quickly turned to the shooter's motivation, with conflicting reports suggesting it was another massacre linked to Islamic terror – in what would have been the third such attack in western Europe in a week – and that it was the work of anti-immigrant far-right extremists.
In a press conference shortly after midnight, police said the shooter was an 18-year-old German-Iranian, and that his motivation was unclear.
A video shows a man believed to be the shooter arguing with an older Munich man in a carpark. He says he is German and appears to complain that the neighbourhood being home to a lot of Turkish people. He calls the district "Hartz 4 quarter" – a reference to welfare payments to the unemployed.
German security forces have been on heightened alert since a 17-year-old Afghan armed with a knife and an ax injured five passengers on a commuter train near Wurzburg on Monday. Last month, authorities arrested three Syrians on suspicion of planning an Islamic State attack in Dusseldorf alleged to have involved suicide bombers, firearms and explosives.
But intelligence officials noted that it was also fifth anniversary of a lone-wolf massacre in Norway that claimed the lives of 77 people. The bomb and gun attacks there were carried out by a right-wing extremist.
Munich is one of Germany's richest cities, with relatively low unemployment, but the neighbourhood around the attack is among its most deprived areas. Much of it was built for the Olympics 44 years ago, particularly as accommodation for journalists covering the games. It was later converted to affordable housing.
As dawn broke on Saturday, about 50 people of varied ethnic backgrounds gathered at a local sports hall hoping for official word on the fate of missing loved ones.
- with Wires
