BERLIN (Reuters) - A gunman killed at least 10 students at a secondary school in southwest Germany on Wednesday, local authorities said, in what appeared to be the worst school shooting in the country in seven years.
"We have to assume a death toll that's in the double-digits," a spokeswoman for the interior ministry in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said. "These are students."
Local police said the gunman, who according to German media reports was dressed in black combat gear, had fled the school in Winnenden, a town of 27,000 near Stuttgart.
Helicopters were circling above the town, police said. Rescue workers and fire fighters were at the school, which had been evacuated.
"Police are coming through the whole time. They're obviously looking all over town for him," said Roberto Seifert, who works at a company neighbouring the school. "We've never had anything like this," he told Reuters by phone.
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German media said the gunman was a former student at the school.
A historic market town whose origins stretch back to the 12th century, Winnenden is the hometown of German firm Kaercher, a renowned maker of high pressure cleaners.
Several school shootings have shocked Germany in past years. In 2006, a masked man wearing explosives and brandishing rifles opened fire at a school in the western town of Emsdetten, wounding at least 11 people before committing suicide.
In April 2002, Germany suffered its worst school shooting when a gunman killed 17 people, including himself, at a high school in the eastern city of Erfurt.
Wednesday's shooting followed a rampage in the United States Tuesday in which a gunman shot dead 9 people then killed himself in southern Alabama.
(Reporting by Holger Hansen, Dave Graham, Noah Barkin)
(Writing by Kerstin Gehmlich; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
