Austria: Police report 3 dead in shooting in Linz, say no further danger to public

Shots were fired in Linz in Austria on Thursday. A police spokesman told the Reuters news agency that three people had been killed and the weapon used had been recovered by law enforcement. 

National public broadcaster ORF reported a large police presence in the Klausenbachstrasse area in the north of the city. 

"The deceased found at the scene were one male and two female persons," Ulrike Handlbauer, a spokeswoman for Upper Austria state police, told ORF. "Police cannot currently give any more detailed comments on the more specific circumstances of the motive or the identity of the deceased."

The tabloid news outlet Kronen Zeitung offered further details on the incident, reporting that an elderly man had shot two women and then himself outside a gastronomical business. It also cited police as saying that the wider danger to the public had passed.

Linz is situated on the River Danube in the Upper Austria region in the north of the country, around half way between Salzburg in the west and Vienna in the east. It's home to more than 200,000 people. 

Gun crime is relatively rare in Austria with only around 0.2 people per 100,000 per year being killed by gunshots. For orientation, that's more than 25 times less frequent than in the US but also not among the lowest levels in Europe. 

Edited by: Rana Taha

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