Munich gunman planned shooting for a year, played violent video games: officials

MUNICH: The 18-year-old gunman who killed nine people in a shooting spree in Munich had been planning his crime for a year but chose his victims at random, officials said on Sunday.

According to reports from US media, officials said investigators had discovered the gunman was an avid player of first-person shooter video games, including the popular "Counter-Strike".

They added that the attacker had illegally purchased the pistol used in the deadly rampage through the "dark web".

"He had been preparing (the shooting) for a year," Bavarian police chief Robert Heimberger told a news conference.

Chief prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch added that he did not specifically choose his victims.

"It is not the case that he deliberately selected" the people who he shot, he said.

Europe reacted in shock to the third attack on the continent in just over a week, after David Ali Sonboly went on a shooting spree at a shopping centre on Friday before turning the gun on himself.

Officials said Saturday that Sonboly, a German-Iranian student, had a history of mental illness.

Investigators said they saw an "obvious link" between the killings and white supremacist Anders Breivik's massacre of 77 people in Norway exactly five years earlier.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Munich had suffered a "night of horror".