Victims were all staff at youth protection center

Suspect identified as 45-year-old German-Turkish man

Forensic police investigators work at the scene of a shooting in Stade, a city about 50 kilometers west of Hamburg in northern Germany, on Monday (local time), where six people were killed. [AFP]
Forensic police investigators work at the scene of a shooting in Stade, a city about 50 kilometers west of Hamburg in northern Germany, on Monday (local time), where six people were killed. [AFP]

Six people were killed in a shooting in a small city in northern Germany on Monday (local time).

Local police said the attack took place at a youth protection center in Stade, near Hamburg, leaving six adults dead and several others wounded.

Five victims — four women and one man — died at the scene, while a sixth died after being taken to hospital. All of the dead were employees of the facility. Police said many of the injured were in serious condition, raising the possibility that the death toll could rise.

At an evening news conference, police announced they had arrested three suspects in connection with the attack, including the alleged gunman. The shooter was identified as a 45-year-old German man of Turkish descent who had been involved in a custody dispute over his three-month-old daughter.

The suspect's three-month-old daughter and the child's mother were also in an office at the facility at the time of the shooting but were unharmed, police said.

Local media reported that the youth protection center where the shooting occurred includes a unit that supports vulnerable women with young children.

A daycare center and an elementary school are located near the scene, briefly putting authorities on alert, though children were unaffected.

Police launched a large-scale operation in the area at the time of the attack. Witnesses said a man and a woman were arrested after attempting to flee the scene in a vehicle.

Stade is a city of fewer than 50,000 people located 40 kilometers from Hamburg.

Mass shootings are rare in Germany compared with the United States and other countries, though several deadly incidents have occurred in recent years. In 2023, a gunman killed six people at a Jehovah's Witnesses hall in Hamburg before taking his own life. In 2016, an 18-year-old German-Iranian man shot and killed nine people in Munich.


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