Three dead and two injured in domestic violence shooting in Germany

Three people died and two were seriously injured in a shooting overnight in a house in the town of Albstadt to the south of the German city of Stuttgart, police reported on Sunday.

According to initial reports, the dead are two men and a woman, with one of them believed to have been the perpetrator.

The two injured are women who were taken to hospital suffering from gunshot wounds. Their condition was not immediately clear, a police spokesman said.

Police said that the deaths appeared to be related to domestic violence, but that the precise relationships between the victims were not immediately clear, with the motive for the shootings unknown. Shots were first reported shortly after midnight.

The area around the incident was cordoned off, with up to 40 police vehicles at the scene as helicopters circled overhead.

The incident occurred in the Lautlingen part of Albstadt, a town of some 46,000 inhabitants that lies some 60 kilometres south of Stuttgart in the Swabian Jura mountains in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg.