At least 3 dead in factory shooting in Switzerland

GlobalPost

At least three people have been killed and seven injured in an early morning shooting at a Swiss wood processing factory, BBC News reported. Four critically injured people were flown to nearby hospitals, authorities said.

The 9:00 AM shooting occurred in the cafeteria of the Kronospan wood processing factory in the town of Menznau, which is not far from the popular tourism center of Lucerne, wrote Reuters.

Read more from GlobalPost: Shooting in Swiss village kills three and injures two

A police spokesman said that the shooter was a 42-year-old who had worked at the factory for a decade, BBC News reported. The police said the gunman was among the dead, but police had not killed him, the New York Times reported.

The wood factory regularly employs 410 people, wrote CNN, but has recently had to scale back production due to a reduced wood harvest.

According to BBC News:

The chief executive of Kronospan, Mauro Capozzo, denied rumours that job cuts were due to be announced.

Menznau's shooting is the second such incident in Switzerland this year, coming soon after a January shooting in a small village that left three people dead and two injured.

Switzerland is one of the most heavily armed nations in Europe, with estimates of around two to three million guns in circulation for a population of around eight million.

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