NEWS: Germany
one killed in shootout of German students in Heidelberg.

A lone gun­man killed one per­son and seri­ous­ly injured three oth­ers in a lec­ture hall at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hei­del­berg, before com­mit­ting suicide.

Ger­man police said the shoot­er used a “long gun” and fired shots around the amphithe­ater in a wild fashion.

The blood­shed sparked a mas­sive oper­a­tion on the uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus in the Neuen­heimer Feld area.

Police have asked peo­ple to avoid the area so res­cuers and emer­gency ser­vices can move freely.

Ger­man media report­ed that the shoot­er appeared to have no reli­gious or polit­i­cal motives.

Hei­del­berg is a uni­ver­si­ty town in south­west­ern Ger­many with a pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 160,000.

The coun­try has some of the strictest gun laws in Europe and school shoot­ings are rare. Any­one under the age of 25 must pass a psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion before obtain­ing a firearms license.

Ger­man news­pa­per Bild report­ed that the shoot­er was a uni­ver­si­ty student.

Police ini­tial­ly said four vic­tims were injured, with a lat­er update con­firm­ing one died in hospital.