Shootings in Germany kill eight people

HANAU, GERMANY: Eight people were killed on Wednesday in two shooting incidents in a German city near Frankfurt and special forces were chasing the gunmen who fled in a car, police said.

Heavily armed police sealed off two streets in the city of Hanau where ambulances had rushed. A police helicopter hovered over the city, east of the financial hub Frankfurt.

The motive for the shootings is still unclear. Local media said gunmen had opened fire at two shisha bars in Hanau.

The gunmen fled the scene of the first incident in a dark-coloured car. Police have set up a hotline for members of the public with information that could lead to the perpetrators.

In a separate incident of multiple fatalities in December, last year, six people, including a police officer and two suspected gunmen, were killed in an hours-long shootout near a cemetery and a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey.

The two suspects were killed acted alone, Jersey City Police Chief Michael Kelly had told a news conference hours later in the state’s second-largest city, which sits directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan.

The two gunmen and three civilian victims were pronounced dead inside the JC Kosher Supermarket. The slain police detective was fatally wounded near a cemetery about a mile away where the shooting apparently started when he tried to intercept one of the suspects, Kelly said