MUNICH: The teenager who shot dead nine people at a Munich shopping mall spent a year planning the rampage but selected his victims at random, officials said Sunday.
Details are emerging of gunman David Ali Sonboly as a depressed 18-year-old who was obsessed with mass killings and had long struggled with his mental health.
With Germany still steeped in grief and shock, a Syrian asylum-seeker killed a woman and injured two people with a machete on Sunday in the city of Reutlingen.
Police said the incident did not bear the hallmarks of a "terrorist attack", and that it could be a "crime of passion".
However a string of attacks in recent months claimed by the Islamic State group has left Europe on edge.
Investigators have ruled out that the Munich shooter had any link with the militants, though he appears to have planned the assault with chilling precision.
Bavarian police chief Robert Heimberger told a press conference Sunday that Sonboly had visited the site and taken photos during a year of preparation.
Chief prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch added that the gunman had not "deliberately selected" his victims, dismissing speculation that Sonbaly sought to target foreigners.
Most of the dead -- who were mainly teenagers -- were foreign nationals. They included a Turk, two Turkish-German dual nationals, a Hungarian, a Kosovan and a Greek, according to police.
Sonboly killed himself after his murderous spree with the 9mm Glock pistol he had bought on the internet.
His attack, which began at a McDonald's branch, also left 35 people injured.
- Bullied -
Steinkraus-Koch said Sonboly had spent two months in a psychiatric unit last year. He suffered anxiety attacks and "social phobias", according to documents found in his bedroom.
Police also found medication, but it was not clear whether he had been taking it. He had continued treatment as an outpatient after his release from hospital.
He also appeared to have been a victim of bullying by other pupils at his school, filing a complaint against three of his tormentors in 2012.
But none of these youngsters were among the shooting spree victims, police stressed.
They added there was no evidence that any of the dead were lured to the McDonald's branch by promises of discounts that Sonboly had sent out from a fake Facebook account, an act Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere has described as "particularly underhand".
Sonboly was obsessed with Anders Behring Breivik, whose massacre of 77 people in Norway came exactly five years before his own shooting spree.
But police also believe the teenager was influenced by a previous shooting in Winnenden, southwest Germany in 2009, when a 17-year-old shot 15 people in his former school before killing himself.
Video footage from Friday apparently shows Sonboly on a car park roof in a heated exchange with a man on a nearby balcony.
"I'm German, I was born here," the black-clad assailant replies after the man swore at him, using curse words for foreigners.
- Gun debate -
Hundreds of people on Sunday gathered outside the Munich shopping centre where the attack took place, to pay tribute to the victims. Many were weeping.
With the country on edge after the Munich rampage, it was further rattled by reports that a 21-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker had killed a woman and injured two people with a machete in the southwestern city of Reutlingen.
"At this stage of the enquiry we have nothing to indicate this was a terrorist attack," police said.
"When a man and woman have an argument, we assume that we are dealing with a crime of passion," a local police spokeswoman told German news agency DPA.
The Munich assault has sparked a debate about whether Germany's strict gun laws should be tightened further, and the fact that Sonboly was able to acquire the pistol online will raise questions over how to stop others from doing the same.
Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, in an interview with the Funke press group, called for a maximum effort to "restrict access to lethal weapons and monitor it closely".
European leaders swiftly voiced solidarity with Germany as the terror alert was launched -- a sign of the jittery mood after a string of militant assaults.
The attack came just four days after a 17-year-old asylum seeker went on a rampage with an axe and a knife on a train in Bavaria, injuring five people. He was believed to be a "lone wolf" Afghan or Pakistani inspired by IS.
And it occurred just over a week after a Tunisian used a truck to mow down 84 people after a Bastille Day fireworks display in Nice, the third major attack on French soil in the past 18 months.
IS described Nice gunman Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel as one of its "soldiers", though investigators have not found direct proof of his allegiance to the militans.
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