Stade (Germany) (AFP) - A gunman killed four women and two men Monday at a German shelter for mothers and their children, police said, reporting that the suspect was in a custody battle over his three-month-old daughter.

Emergency workers rushed to the scene of the shooting in the northern town of Stade and found four people already dead. A fifth person died soon after at the scene, while a sixth later succumbed to their injuries.

“The perpetrator had an appointment today, along with many of the victims, to discuss future custody arrangements for his three-month-old daughter,” said Kathrin Schuol, the police chief for Lueneburg, which is leading the investigation.

“Both the child and her mother were present at the location but were not injured by gunfire.”

Schuol said the victims – four women and two men – were all child welfare workers, and had all been shot “in a brutal manner”.

A seventh person was wounded and reported in a stable condition.

The suspected gunman tried to flee in a car driven by a 65-year-old woman – believed to have “a close connection to the gunman’s family” – but was captured after a short chase, Schuol said.

Police opened fire on the car but neither the suspected gunman nor the driver were hurt, she added. Both are being held in police custody.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called news of the shooting “deeply shocking”.

“Many people who were trying to help and protect others have lost their lives or been injured,” Merz said. “My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”

- No firearm licence -

The suspect was previously known to police, including for making threats, but “he has not previously been regarded as a particularly violent individual,” Schuol said.

She added that the suspect did not have a firearms licence and it was unclear how he obtained the weapon.

Police said the man was a Turkish citizen but was born in Germany.

The girl’s mother told police after the shooting that she was no longer in a relationship with the suspect, Schuol said, adding that the young child had been placed in care as police question the mother and investigate the case.

The suspect lives in Hanover, about 200 kilometres (120 miles) to the south.

Schuol said the shelter in Stade – a town on the Elbe river, about 50 kilometres west of Hamburg – is run by a private provider, but offers services to clients including the child welfare agency in Hanover.

An amateur video clip published by Bild daily showed a police roadblock stopping a Mercedes passenger car with a blown-out back tyre on a country road.

Officers with guns are then seen shouting at the two occupants to get out and arresting them as they lie face down on the road.

- ‘Extremely cold-blooded’ -

Lower Saxony’s interior minister, Daniela Behrens, described the killings as “extremely cold-blooded” and said that the “suffering that the perpetrator has caused here in Stade is difficult to comprehend and, I believe, even harder to put into words”.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier offered his condolences to the victims of the “appalling act of violence” in Stade in a statement on Monday.

“I am deeply shocked by the scale of the violence in a place that is meant to offer safety,” Steinmeier said. “My thoughts are with the families of those who have died and those who have been injured, who are having to endure so much pain.”

Internationally “the majority of mass killings – defined as incidents resulting in four or more deaths – stem from domestic violence,” Alexandre Rodde, a researcher specializing in mass killings and terrorism, told AFP.

Germany has some of Europe’s strictest gun laws – they require anyone under 25 to pass a psychiatric exam before applying for a gun licence.

But mass shootings occur from time to time, and Monday’s was among the deadliest in recent times.

In February 2020, a far-right extremist shot dead nine people and wounded five others in the central German city of Hanau.

In March 2023 a disgruntled former Jehovah’s Witness member shot dead six people from the group’s congregation in Hamburg, before turning the gun on himself.

In May 2022 a 21-year-old gunman opened fire at a secondary school in northern Germany, wounding a female member of staff before being arrested.