German highschool student kills 15

POLITICS - A 17-year-old gunman dressed in black opened fire at his former high school in southwestern Germany today, killing at least 13 people there and another two elsewhere, before police shot him to death, German state officials said.

The teenager killed nine students, three teachers, and a passer-by outside Albertville high school in Winnenden, authorities said.

Triggering a land and air manhunt, he hijacked a car, let the passengers go and drove about 40 kilometers before police found him. When confronted, he killed two bystanders in a shootout with police before he was slain, Baden Wuerttemburg Gov. Guenther Oettinger said. Two officers were seriously injured, but there was no immediate information on other casualties.

Police have identified the gunman as Tim Kretschmer, who graduated last year from the school of about 1,000 students.

It was the country's worst shooting since another teenage gunman killed 16 people and himself in another high school in 2002.

"He went into the school with a weapon and carried out a bloodbath," said police Chief Erwin Hetger. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."

The gunman entered the school in the town 20 kilometers northeast of Stuttgart and opened fire, shooting at random, police said.

Right: The 9-mm Beretta that Tim Kretschmer used in the killings.

Witnesses said students jumped from the windows of the school building. Concerned parents quickly swarmed around the school, which was evacuated.

It was about four hours later that authorities said the gunman had been killed, but it was not immediately clear at what time police shot him.

The German government was "deeply shocked and incensed about the appalling killing spree," Ulrich Wilhelm, a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in Berlin.

In 2002, 19-year-old Robert Steinhaeuser shot and killed 12 teachers, a secretary, two students and a police officer before turning his gun on himself in the Gutenberg high school in Erfurt, in eastern Germany.

Steinhaeuser, who had been expelled for forging a doctor's note, was a gun club member licensed to own weapons. The attack led Germany to raise the age for owning recreational firearms from 18 to 21.