A woman opened fire in a hospital in Germany's southwestern town of Loerrach in a shooting in which she and three other people, including a toddler, were killed.
A police officer was also seriously wounded in the final shootout with the woman, which took place at the town's Saint Elizabeth hospital.
The shooting started at 6pm at Saint Elizabeth hospital in the centre of Loerrach, which lies near Germany's borders with France and Switzerland.
‘Towards 4pm, firefighters were called out to an explosion followed by a fire in an apartment situated in a street near the hospital,’ Eugen Wissler, a spokesman for the Loerrach police said.
‘As they arrived, they heard gunfire coming from the building. They then saw an armed woman come out and cross the road heading towards the hospital,’ he added.
Once inside, the woman was confronted by the police and opened fire on them with a shotgun. After firing several warning shots, police finally shot her dead, he said.
The other person who died in the hospital was a member of staff there.
Firefighters meanwhile found the bodies of a girl aged three or four years old and a middle-aged man in the burnt-out apartment, police spokesman Joachim Langanky said.
Police suspect they may have died before the explosion and fire because both bodies bore gunshot wounds.
They were unable to confirm whether or not the two were the husband and daughter of the woman behind the hospital shoot-out. Nor did police yet know what had set off the incident.
Loerrach, a town of some 48,000 people, lies near Germany's borders with France and Switzerland.
The incident comes only days after the manslaughter trial opened in Stuttgart Thursday of the father of Tim Kretschmer, the teenager who shot dead 15 people before killing himself at his old school in March 2009.
Joerg Kretschmer, a 51-year-old businessman, is accused of having violated gun laws because his 17-year-old son was able to take his 9mm Beretta pistol from his bedside to use in the shootings in the southern town of Winnenden.
