AKIPRESS.COM - Munich police on Saturday were hunting for a motive after a rampage left nine people dead in a busy shopping area before the suspected gunman, an 18-year-old local resident with dual German and Iranian citizenship, apparently committed suicide, reports The Washington Post.

The mass killing, which also left 21 people injured, was described by police as an act of "suspected terrorism." But as authorities searched an apartment in the city's Maxvorstadt district, there was no immediate indication of why the gunman had struck, according to the German news wire DPA.

Neighbors interviewed by the German tabloid Bild, which ran the headline "Bloodbath in Munich" across its front page on Saturday, described the suspected killer as "a quiet guy." Authorities did not immediately release his name, and police spokesman Wolfgang Behr declined to comment on "the investigations we're carrying out around the city.”

The attack was condemned across the world. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi decried "the killing of innocent and defenseless people,” according to IRNA, Iran’s official news agency. French President François Hollande also denounced the "disgusting terrorist attack."

"Germany will resist, it can count on France's friendship and cooperation," Hollande said, adding that he planned to speak with German Chancellor Angela Merkel later on Saturday.

As the German interior minister Thomas de Maizère ordered flags to be flown at half-staff nationwide and Merkel prepared to convene a meeting of her top security officials, emergency restrictions in Munich were lifted and public transit resumed normal operations.

But the city remained deeply shaken by the attack, and the police chief acknowledged that the motive remained “fully unclear.”

The assault was the third act of carnage to shake Europe in eight days. It followed a July 14 attack by a Tunisian-born man who killed 84 people in the French Riviera city of Nice by plowing a truck into a crowd. On Monday, an Afghan teenager wielding an ax wounded five people on a train near the Bavarian city of Würzburg. In both those cases, the assailants were inspired by the Islamic State, authorities said.

But German officials said investigators were looking into the possibility that Friday’s attack was motivated by anti-immigrant sentiments, as well as the prospect that Islamist extremism was behind it.

There were no immediate details about the victims of Friday’s attack on Munich’s Olympia shopping complex. Munich’s police chief, Hubertus Andrä, said 10 people were killed in total, including the shooter, who committed suicide about half a mile away from the mall. Sixteen of the 21 wounded were still being treated early Saturday at hospitals, police said.

About 50 people of various ethnic backgrounds gathered at a Munich sports hall early Saturday to await official word on the fate of missing loved ones.