A 17-year-old dressed in black combat gear killed at least ten people today in a shooting spree at his old high school in southern Germany before fleeing the scene.

Reports from Winnenden, in the northern suburbs of Stuttgart, said that the youth was captured after an hour-long manhunt involving armed commandos, helicopters and dogs but a police spokesman told the AFP news agency that he was still on the run.

Police said that the gunman walked into the Albertville technical school at around 9.30 am and started firing randomly. One local reporters said that he used a machine gun.

The Winnender Zeitung said that the youth, who was known to police but has not been identified, killed eight people inside the school and two outside. Eight of those killed were said to have been schoolchildren.

Police confirmed the death toll and said there had been "numerous wounded". A spokeswoman for the interior ministry in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg added: "We have to assume a death toll that’s in the double-digits."

As helicopters scoured the town, rescue workers and firefighters poured into the school, which had been evacuated.

Germany has been shocked by several school shootings in recent years. In 2006, a masked man wearing explosives and brandishing rifles opened fire at a school in the western German town of Emsdetten, wounding at least 11 people before committing suicide.

In April 2002, Germany suffered its worst school shooting when a gunman killed 17 people, including himself, at a high school in the eastern city of Erfurt.

Today's shooting occurred after news that in the United States, at least 10 people including the suspected gunman and his mother were killed in a shooting spree and car chase in southern Alabama.

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