Sabrina Szameitat, dpa I Wednesday, April 26, 2023
BERLIN – German special forces entered a shop in Berlin’s Schöneberg district to end a hostage-taking situation in the early hours of Tuesday, the police announced on Twitter.
While the perpetrator killed himself, his male hostage was unharmed, the police said.
According to a dpa photographer, the hostage, who had been in the man’s grip for hours, was led to an ambulance. Earlier, a woman had already been rescued “from the danger zone,” according to the police. She had been slightly injured.
“I can confirm that the operation is over,” a police spokesman told dpa early Tuesday morning. The special forces entered the shop shortly after 2:30 am (0030 GMT).
Initial emergency calls about a robbery at the shop at around 5:30 pm on Monday had triggered the large-scale operation not far from Wittenbergplatz, a square in the upmarket district to the west of the city centre where major stores like KaDeWe are located. For hours the normally busy area was cordoned off.
In addition to officers from the SEK special forces unit, ambulances and paramedics also rushed to the scene. Shortly after their arrival, the police were able to arrest another man “relatively early,” the police spokesman said. Whether this man was an accomplice of the hostage-taker is now being investigated. Both were armed.
During the operation, the police asked people via Twitter not to publish any photos of the events at the crime scene: “We urgently ask passers-by, residents and also representatives of the press not to publish any pictures of our forces and operations in Schöneberg during the ongoing operation. This can hinder the operation and endanger the people involved.”
