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Police operation in Berlin: investigation into attempted murder
Photo: Jürgen Held / imago images / Jürgen Held
The security authorities assume that the early morning shooting near the SPD party headquarters in Berlin-Kreuzberg was a crime from the milieu of organized crime.
The act does not seem to have a political background.
"Because of the shooting in the organized crime milieu, we are investigating several suspects for attempted murder together with a homicide squad from the Berlin police force and are examining the application for arrest warrants," the Berlin public prosecutor said on Twitter.
A spokesman for the prosecutor said it was about people who belonged to the group of the four injured.
How many there were, he did not say.
"We assume that those involved knew each other", quoted the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" a police spokesman.
In the evening no one could be reached at the Berlin police press office to confirm this information.
An injured man in the sewer
According to the current state of knowledge, residents alerted the police around four o'clock that night, who had heard the shots in Stresemannstrasse in the immediate vicinity of the SPD party headquarters.
The emergency services found three injured there.
A fourth injured man had apparently jumped into the nearby Landwehr Canal, from which rescue workers pulled him.
The seriously injured men aged 30, 30, 39 and 42 came to hospitals for treatment, where they were admitted to the hospital.
Several dozen police officers, some of them heavily armed, were on duty before sunrise.
A helicopter also flew over the capital.
There were no arrests at first.
SEK use
In the afternoon, SEK officers were at the scene, a police spokesman confirmed.
They went into a building with weapons at the ready and searched an apartment, as a photographer from the German press agency reported on site.
According to the police, the SEK operation ended in the late afternoon.
The crime scene is apparently in a gate entrance on Stresemannstrasse.
The police cordoned off a large area.
At Stresemannstrasse 23 across from the SPD party headquarters there was a bullet hole in a door, as the dpa photographer reported, not far from another bullet hole in a glass door.
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jos / dpa