A killer is on the run after shooting multiple people at a Synagogue in Germany, police say.
Multiple people are dead and injured following the attack in Halle, a city in the east of Germany.
Police warned the attacker had "fled" and that people should stay inside.
Here is the latest from the Associated Press:
Police in the eastern German city of Halle say people are believed to have been killed in what local media reported was a shooting.
A police tweet Wednesday gave no information on the nature of their deployment in the city but said that initial information is that "people were killed." They didn't give a number. They also urged people to stay at home.
The Bild and Middeldeutsche Zeitung newspapers reported that there was a shooting.
And the latest from Reuters:
Two people were killed in a shooting in the eastern German city of Halle on Wednesday and police were looking for a suspect, they said on Twitter.
"We have a deployment in Halle," the local police said on Twitter.
"According to preliminary findings, people killed. We are conducting urgent searches. Perpetrator on the run. Please stay at home or look for another secure place."
Mass-selling daily Bild said on its website the shooting took place in front of a synagogue.
Here's how Halle and Landsberg look on the map. Police have confirmed no link between the two incidents.
Two people were killed Wednesday in a shooting in the eastern German city of Halle and the suspected assailants fled, police said.
Several shots were fired and the suspected assailants then fled in a car, police said in a tweet. They urged residents to stay in their homes or indoors.
A short time later, police reported that one person had been arrested. They gave no information on that person. Pictures from the scene showed a body lying in the street behind a police cordon.
Police didn't give any further information, but said officers were out in force in the city hunting down the suspects.
They gave no details about the target of the attack and there were varying reports. The Bild and Mitteldeutsche Zeitung newspapers reported that the shooting took place near a synagogue — Wednesday is the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. A person interviewed on n-tv television said that he had been in a kebab shop when he saw a man with a helmet and military jacket, who he said fired shots into the shop.
Police said that shots were also fired in Landsberg, about 15 kilometers (just under 10 miles) from Halle. It wasn't clear whether that incident was related to the shooting in the city.
The railway station in Halle, a city of 240,000, was closed down as a precaution amid the police operation.
Some background from Reuters:
Initial police statements did not confirm the media reports associating the gunfire and grenade attack with Jewish targets.
Anti-Semitism is especially sensitive in Germany, which during World War Two was responsible for the genocide of 6 million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust.
Despite comprehensive de-Nazification in the post-war era, fears of resurgent anti-Semitic hatred have never completely gone away, whether from far-right neo-Nazis or more recently from Muslim immigrants.
Occasional past attacks have ranged from the scrawling of Nazi swastikas on gravestones to firebombings at synagogues and even several murders. In recent years, cases of assault or verbal abuse, in some cases directed against people wearing traditional Jewish skullcaps, have raised an outcry.
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