'He laughed like a normal person'

David Ali

The teenager who shot dead nine people in a gun rampage in Munich was "obsessed" with mass killers such as Norwegian rightwing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik and had no links to the Islamic State group, police said yesterday.

Europe reacted in shock to the third attack on the continent in just over a week, after 18-year-old David Ali Sonboly went on a shooting spree at a shopping centre on Friday evening before turning the gun on himself.

Officials said Sonboly, a German-Iranian student, had a history of mental illness.

"There is absolutely no link to the Islamic State," Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae said, describing the assault as a "classic act by a deranged person".

Investigators see an "obvious link" between Friday's killings and Breivik's massacre of 77 people in Norway exactly five years earlier, Andrae added.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her first reaction to the carnage, said Munich had suffered a "night of horror".

Most of the victims in Friday's attack were foreigners, including three Turkish nationals, three people from Kosovo and a Greek man.

Most of the casualties were young people aged 15 to 21, with three women among the dead according to Munich police.

Prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch said Sonboly had suffered depression, while media reports said he had undergone psychiatric treatment.

The teenager had 300 rounds of ammunition in a rucksack when he targeted the busy Olympia shopping mall, just minutes away from the flat he shared with his family, according to authorities.

Officials suggested he may have posed as a girl on Facebook and posted information about a fake McDonald's promotion to lure people to the fast-food restaurant where he first opened fire.

Grieving Munich residents laid roses and lit candles in memory of the victims, with one placard bearing the simple plea: "Why?"

Sixteen people were wounded in the attack, three of them critically.

Merkel was to convene her security council yesterday.

The attack sent Germany's third largest city into lockdown as police launched a massive operation to track down what had initially been thought to be up to three assailants.

Neighbours said Sonboly was born to Iranian parents, a taxi driver father and a mother who worked at a department store.

They lived in the well-heeled Maxvorstadt neighbourhood in a tidy social housing block popular with immigrant families.

A police source cited by DPA news agency said Sonboly loved playing violent video games and was an admirer of the 17-year-old German who shot dead 15 people at his school near Stuttgart in 2009.

Neighbour Delfye Dalbi, 40, described him as a helpful young man who was "never bitter or angry", though others remembered a quiet loner.

"He laughed like a normal person," said Dalbi.

But a video posted on social media appeared to cast Sonboly in a different light, showing a man dressed in black walking away from the McDonald's restaurant while firing repeatedly on people as they fled.

Survivors described terrifying scenes as shoppers rushed from the area, some carrying children in their arms.

Another video posted online appeared to show Sonboly on the top floor of a multi-storey car park exchanging a tirade of insults with nearby bystanders.

At one point the gunman appears to mention being a victim of bullying though his words cannot be heard clearly.

"I'm German, I was born here," the assailant is heard to reply after one man reeled off a volley of swear words, including an offensive term for foreigners.

A police source cited by DPA news agency said Sonboly loved playing violent video games and was an admirer of the 17-year-old German who shot dead 15 people at his school near Stuttgart in 2009.

Europe has been on high alert for terrorism after a string of attacks in neighbouring France and Belgium claimed by IS.

The attack came just four days after a 17-year-old asylum seeker went on a rampage with an axe and a knife on a train in Bavaria, injuring five people.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere had said that assailant was believed to be a "lone wolf" who appeared to have been "inspired" by IS but was not a member of the jihadist network.

Friday's massacre spurred many in Munich to think the unthinkable.

"It has reached us. People in Munich have long had a queasy feeling. Fears grew with every attack in Paris, Istanbul or Brussels," said the Abendzeitung newspaper's editor-in-chief Michael Schilling.

"Since Friday it is clear that there can be no security anywhere, not even in the safest German city."