Munich shooting: Gunman planned attack ‘for year’

Seven of his victims were teenagers, five of them under 16.

Police said that the man who was killed was believed to be the attacker himself.

Bavaria’s top security official on Sunday urged a constitutional change to allow the country’s military to be able to be deployed in support of police during attacks like Friday night’s deadly rampage at a Munich mall, while Germany’s vice chancellor proposed even stricter controls on firearms.

“The suspect had fears of contact with others” and also depression, Thomas Steinkraus-Koch said.

German prosecutors said the shooter acquired the semi-automatic pistol he used in the killings on the dark web, which can only be accessed via special software.

The crime office told a news conference that the victims of the attack had not been specifically targeted and were not classmates of the gunman.

According to neighbors, a teen named Ali Sonboly lived in an apartment searched by police after the attack.

They said medication for his problems had been found in his room.

Officials said the killer used a 9mm pistol and had 300 rounds of ammunition in his rucksack when he went on what they called a “classic shooting rampage”.

Investigators are now discounting previous statements that the shooter had researched the massacre in Norway by Anders Breivik, which took place on the same day in 2011.

The Afghan’s decision to delete his WhatsApp chat with the gunman and their meeting just before the Munich attack led investigators to suspect he knew of the planned shooting in advance.

Nor did the victims include anyone who commented on a fake Facebook page created by the gunman in May, using photographs and the name of a young Turkish woman, the officials said.

Munich police spokesman Marcus da Gloria Martins said the Afghan teen accomplice was behind a Facebook post that lured victims to the mall shooting with a free meal.

Police earlier said the gunman was a deranged Iranian-German who was fixated with mass killings but not inspired by Islamist militancy.

In what was originally reported as a terrorist attack, a lone gunman killed nine people and injured 35 others, ten of whom were severely wounded.

Mr Heimberger said German-Iranian Sonboly’s parents were still in shock and detectives had not yet had a chance to interview them.