Five people have been shot and killed at a youth welfare facility ⁠in a northern German town, police have said.

The motive for ⁠the ​incident in Stade, close to the port city of Hamburg, on Monday was not immediately clear, a police ⁠spokesperson said. Two people, including the suspected ⁠shooter, had been arrested, he added.

It is unclear how many people ​were injured, he said. All five people who were killed were adults.

Police believe the incident occurred at a youth welfare facility ‌in the town of nearly 50,000 people to the west of Hamburg. Police cordoned off the area in a cobbled, tree-lined street with red brick homes, and forensic experts and plainclothes police were at the scene.

After the ‌incident, police told residents to steer clear of the area but later said there was no danger to ​the general population.

A witness saw a man and a woman trying to flee the scene by car before being intercepted by police, the news site Focus Online reported.

Mass shootings are relatively rare in Germany, ⁠especially when compared with the US, but there has been a spate ​of high-profile cases. In 2023, a ​gunman in Hamburg shot dead six people before killing ​himself at a ‌Jehovah’s Witness ​worship hall. ​In 2016, an 18-year-old German-Iranian man who was obsessed with mass killings killed at least nine people in Munich.