SCHOOL SHOOTING KILLS AT LEAST 10

German police say a gunman killed at least 10 people and injured several when he opened fire at a secondary school near Stuttgart in the southwest of the country. The gunman is reported to have fled the school.At least 10 people were killed on Wednesday when a gunman fired shots at a secondary school in southwestern Germany, a regional government official said. "We have to assume a death toll in the double-digits," a spokeswoman for the interior ministry in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said, news agency Reuters reported. "These are students."

The incident took place at the Albertville school in Winnenden, a town of 27,600, near Stuttgart in southwestern Germany. 

 AP quoted area police spokesman Klaus Hinderer saying students are among those killed, but he had no further immediate details.

The gunman, dressed in a black camouflage suit, reportedly began shooting around at the school at 9.30 am local time. 

"The person shot all around," a police spokesman told German television channel N24. " The person has fled the scene."

Police, rescue workers and fire fighters were at the scene and the school had been evacuated, he said.

The gunman, who is described by media reports as being in his early 20s, has not been identified. String of school shootings

The Winnenden shooting is the latest in a spate of school violence that has shocked Germany in the past several years. In 2006, a masked man opened fire at a school in the western German town of Emsdetten, wounding at least eleven people before committing suicide. 

Germany's worst school shooting took place in April 2002 when a gunman killed 17 pupils and teachers before killing himself at a high school in the eastern city Erfurt.

Wednesday's shooting spree took place after an Alabama incident in which at least 10 people were killed including the suspected gunman and his mother.