A “large-scale” police manhunt is continuing after a deadly shooting at a rave in northern Switzerland left an Italian woman dead and several injured early on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“We are currently in the middle of a large-scale operation in progress,” said Michael Leupold, commander of the Aargau regional police, at a press conference on Sunday evening.<\/p>\n
Until the perpetrators have been identified and stopped, “there is no end to this large-scale operation in sight,” he added.<\/p>\n
A 22-year-old Italian woman was killed by one or more shots shortly after the end of the event in Aarau, about 40 kilometres west of Zurich.<\/p>\n
Investigators currently believe the young woman, who was resident in Switzerland, was a random victim.<\/p>\n
Five other participants in the rave event were injured, though none were in a life-threatening condition by the evening.<\/p>\n
Authorities are currently working with three equally weighted hypotheses, Leupold added. The shooting could be a terrorist act, a rampage or a settling of scores in criminal circles.<\/p>\n
Police said traces of two different types of weapons were found after shots were fired.<\/p>\n
The event, which ran from Saturday afternoon until 2 am on Sunday (0000 GMT), had already ended and only around 100 people were believed to have remained at the venue, the spokesman said.<\/p>\n
Police received the first emergency calls at around 2:30 am and deployed a large number of officers to the scene.<\/p>\n
The area remained extensively cordoned off on Sunday, although police said this was primarily to preserve evidence rather than because of an immediate danger to the public.<\/p>\n
Authorities appealed for witnesses to submit video and photographic material.<\/p>\n
Thousands expected at rave<\/p>\n
Organizers had expected around 3,500 people at the Aarauer Rave, a long-established event held on the grounds of the Aargau Racing Club.<\/p>\n
The event had been promoted in advance as the “largest rave in north-western Switzerland.”<\/p>\n
The racing club expressed its condolences to the victims’ families.<\/p>\n
The party “was overshadowed by a serious incident,” the club said in a statement, adding that emergency services had been immediately alerted.<\/p>\n
Meloni offers ‘deepest condolences’<\/p>\n
After the Italian Foreign Ministry confirmed the victim was an Italian national, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offered her “deepest condolences” to the woman’s family in a post on X.<\/p>\n
She said her thoughts were with the woman’s relatives, the injured and all those affected by the incident.<\/p>\n
Meloni said she was following developments closely and “trusting in the work of the Swiss authorities to shed full light on what happened and identify those responsible.”<\/p>\n
Witnesses thought shots were fireworks<\/p>\n
Several witnesses told Swiss newspaper Blick that revellers initially mistook the burst of gunfire for fireworks.<\/p>\n
One woman said someone then shouted “Everybody down!” and her group hid beneath the DJ booth. A woman was struck by a bullet, she said.<\/p>\n
“It was terrible,” the witness told Blick.<\/p>\n
Those still at the rave were taken by police to a nearby gymnasium.<\/p>\n
DJ Tekibo, who was performing at the event, described what had happened as “absolutely heartbreaking” in an Instagram story.<\/p>\n
“Techno and raves are supposed to be a place for freedom and safety,” he wrote, adding that he had “lost an important friend” and would withdraw from performing for a period of time.<\/p>\n
Police across the border in Germany were also involved in the wider search operation following the shooting.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for police in Freiburg described the cross-border involvement as routine but gave no details of the specific measures being taken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A “large-scale” police manhunt is continuing after a deadly shooting at a rave in northern Switzerland left an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[59789,31795,59798,13778,59911,59909,22432,41,17,59910],"class_list":["post-122859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-aargau","tag-blick","tag-christiane-oelrich","tag-italian","tag-leupold","tag-meloni","tag-sunday","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland","tag-womans"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117186087286580316","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}