• The hostage situation, which ended just after noon on Saturday, was dealt with by 300 officers, including special forces.
• During a standoff with police, the man, whose name has not been released, was killed.
• Police in Saxony said the nine-year-old was with him at the time. They think it was a friend’s child.

Officers said they first talked to a German man in his 40s who had locked himself in a shopping mall with a nine-year-old child and a 38-year-old shop worker.

The hostage situation, which ended just after noon on Saturday, was dealt with by 300 officers, including special forces.

During a standoff with police, the man, whose name has not been released, was killed.

“The 40-year-old died from injuries she got during the attack and when the hostages were freed. More research is being done on the specifics of what happened, “The police in Dresden, which is the capital of the state of Saxony, wrote on Twitter.

The man is thought to have killed his 62-year-old mother, whose body was found in another part of Dresden early on Saturday morning. He then went to the city centre.

At about 8.30 a.m. local time, he went into a building on Ammonstrasse and started shooting at the door of a radio station.

Police in Saxony said the nine-year-old was with him at the time. They think it was a friend’s child.

Staff at Radio Dresden said that a man with a gun had gone into the office building where the station is located, the Ammonhof, and fired several shots.

The suspect then took the child and drove to the Altmarkt-Galerie shopping mall, where he took a worker hostage and locked the two of them in an office.

Then, he called the police, who told him that they were talking to him and that a group of people there were trying to talk things out. This was around 11.30 a.m.

During the operation to free the hostages, the mall was cleared out and the Striezelmarkt Christmas market was closed.

The suspect had a mental illness

During the stand-off, when the police heard gunshots, they forced open a door to get into the office.

Police said that the hostages did not appear to have been hurt during the ordeal.

Police spokesman Thomas Geithner said that past investigations showed that the suspect was mentally ill.

His mother, who was 62 years old, was found dead in an apartment building in the Prohlis neighbourhood of the city on Saturday, police said.

In recent days, security has become more important in Germany. This is because earlier this week, investigators stopped a far-right plot to overthrow the government and put an aristocrat in charge of a new state.

Also Read

Germany detains 25 alleged coup plotters

German police have detained 25 persons in a plot-to-topple-the-government probe. Suspects allegedly...