Several people were injured by a gunman at a lecture theatre in the southwest German city of Heidelberg on Monday, police said.

       The gunman was dead, police added, but did not give details of how that happened. They had earlier asked people on Twitter to avoid the Neuenheimer Feld area of Heidelberg, where the city’s university is located.

       “This is what is known so far: A lone perpetrator injured several people in a lecture hall with a long gun. The perpetrator himself is dead,” police said in a tweet.

       German news agency dpa cited unidentified security sources as saying that the gunman killed himself.

       It also reported that the gunman is believed to have been a student himself, and that security officials say initial indications are that he did not have any political or religious motive.

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       Police said the weapon used in the shooting was a long-barrelled firearm.

       It is not yet known how many people were wounded, or how seriously.

       Heidelberg is located south of Frankfurt and has about 160,000 inhabitants and its university is one of Germany’s best-known.