A masked man was shot dead Thursday after entering a movie theater in southwestern Germany with what appeared to be a rifle and taking several hostages, authorities said. No one else was hurt.
The armed man entered the Kinopolis movie theater in the town of Viernheim in the early afternoon and apparently fired a gun.
The man held several people, police spokeswoman Christiane Kobus said, but she didn’t have a precise number.
Officers “successively entered the cinema and were able to locate the man and the people he was holding,” Kobus told The Associated Press. “There was a threat situation and the man was then shot dead by a colleague.”
Police said that the deployment lasted about three hours. There were no other injuries, Kobus said. She added that she had no information on the assailant’s identity and motives.
Another police spokesman, Bernd Hochstaedter, said that there are no indications at present of a Muslim background.
Hesse state’s interior minister, Peter Beuth, said it wasn’t clear whether the weapon was functional, and police said they were still checking that. Beuth told the regional legislature in Wiesbaden that the man was masked and that apparently four shots were fired. 
Beuth said the man had given a confused impression, news agency dpa reported.
Cinema employee Guri Blakaj, who was working the till at the time, said he saw an armed man at the popcorn counter and at first thought he was a customer who had come in a costume — “but then we quickly realized it was something more serious, and we lay down on the ground.”
Blakaj told n-tv television that the man told him to close the doors while holding the weapon to his head, then ordered him to go to his office and stay there. He said the man shot at a colleague but didn’t hit him.
Speaking to reporters for the first time on Thursday, Didiza said she was unfazed by the violence triggered by her candidacy.
“I do not think it reflects the feelings of the community of Tshwane,” she said.
“I therefore don’t feel in any way alienated, I feel part of that community.”
The situation in Pretoria Thursday was “calm but tense” police said, while local media reported fresh looting in Mabopane.
Several deaths attributed to tension between rival factions within the ANC have been reported around the country in the run-up to the elections, in which analysts say the party faces the possible loss of some major cities.
Municipal elections touch a raw nerve, dealing with issues such as unemployment, housing, water and sewage services in a country where many feel they have not benefited as they should have from the end of white minority rule.

Source: Arab News