Updated: 5.55pm
GERMAN POLICE SAID they shot at a man “rampaging” at Berlin Cathedral and armed officers cordoned off the entrances to the landmark in the heart of the German capital.
“Shortly after 4 pm (1400 GMT) police shot at a rampaging man at Berlin Cathedral,” police said in a tweet.
“He was wounded in the leg.”
The man’s age and nationality were not known.
Police said there was no sign that the man with a knife had a “terrorist motive”.
“Based on what we know so far, we have no information that the suspect in any way had a terrorist or Islamist motive,” a police spokesman said.
The spokesman later added that the man, whose threatening behaviour led police to shoot him in the leg, was a 53-year-old Austrian who had been wielding a knife and was “verbally aggressive”.
It was not immediately clear whether anyone else was hurt in the incident at Berlin’s main Protestant cathedral, one of the city’s top tourist attractions.
The iron-domed house of worship is on Museum Island off east Berlin’s main Unter den Linden boulevard and close to the Alexanderplatz shopping district.
An AFP reporter said the entrances to the building were blocked off with red-and-white police tape and several officers with automatic weapons were patrolling the scene.
DPA news agency said some witnesses were taken away to receive psychological counselling.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say