A man armed with a gun killed eight people at a restaurant in the town of Uhersky Brod, in the eastern Czech Republic near Zlin, a Czech Interior Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.
“The shooter is also dead,” the spokesman said. The interior minister is flying to the area now, he said.
Authorities don’t yet know the identity or motivation of the shooter, the spokesman said. However, at this time they do not believe the incident is terror-related.
Milan Chovanec, the Czech interior minister, said on Twitter: “According to available news, this is not a terrorist attack, but an act committed by aberrant individual.”
A spokesman for the local police told CNN that the shooting started at 12:30 p.m. local time in the Druzba restaurant in central Uhersky Brod.
“There was a massive shooting in the restaurant, the attacker is thought to be a local man in his 60s,” the spokesman said.
The whole operation lasted several hours, the spokesman said. The town does not have a special forces police unit, he added.
Czech TV reporter Vaclav Cernohorsky told CNN that the mayor of the town told reporters the shooter may have been mentally unstable.
The gunman rushed into the restaurant and fired multiple times, Cernohorsky said, citing the mayor. The shooter then killed himself, the mayor reportedly said.
No details have yet emerged about the victims, who were in the restaurant eating lunch at the time of the attack, Cernohorsky said.
Local media reports say that two other people were wounded in the shooting.
Uhersky Brod,a town of about 50,000 people, is located in the eastern region of the Czech Republic near the border with Slovakia.