Berlin  - Germany was in a state of shock Wednesday after a teenager killed 15 people in a school shooting spree that echoed a similar tragedy seven years ago.

"It is a sad day for the whole of Germany," Chancellor Angela Merkel" said after the rampage in the south-west region of Baden-Wuerttemberg.

"It is incredible that within the space of a few seconds, students and teachers have lost their lives as a result of a terrible crime," she said, offering her condolences to the victims' families.

The 17-year-old gunman, identified in media reports as Tim K, began his shooting spree shortly after 9:30 am (0830 GMT) in the Albertville secondary school in Wenningen, near Stuttgart.

Witnesses said he walked calmly into three classrooms and opened fire, without saying a word. Police later found the bodies of eight girl pupils and a boy aged 14-15 as well as three female teachers, one of them a trainee.

In the meantime the gunman fled, shooting dead an employee at a nearby psychiatric clinic school before hijacking a car and forcing its owner to drive him to Wendlingen,
40 kilometres away.

The driver alerted police, who cornered the gunmen in a car showroom where a gunbattle erupted. When it was over, two employees and the gunman were dead and two policemen injured.

Police sources said the gunman apparently shot himself in the head after being wounded in the leg by a police bullet.

The shooting happened hours after at least 11 people were killed in a similar shooting spree in the US state of Alabama on Tuesday.

It was also reminiscent of Germany's worst school bloodbath, which occurred in April 2002, when a 19-year-old high school student went on a rampage in Erfurt, killing 12 teachers, two students, a school secretary and a policeman before killing himself.

The motive was not immediately clear for Wednesday's crime. Experts speculated it could have been the work of a youth craving to get into the limelight or triggered by television images of the Alabama shooting.

The teenager, whose father was reported to have a licence for 18 firearms, was said to have been wearing black combat gear when he walked unhindered into the school he attended until 2007.

Police said the youth had started an apprenticeship after leaving school and had shown no unusual behaviour.

A search of his parents home revealed that one of the weapons and 50 rounds of ammunition was missing.

Germany's GDP police union called for better safety precautions to ensure "that no random person can enter school buildings while lessons are in progress."

One schoolgirl told reporters how she was sitting in her classroom when she heard five or six shots being fired.

"I looked out of the window and I could see police and ambulances everywhere. I've seen things like this in films and I thought 'now it's happening to me in real life'."

Another student described how his teacher shepherded her class into another part of the school building where she was fatally hit in the back by a bullet fired through the door.

Some 580 pupils were in the school at the time and remained there or in an adjacent gymnasium and swimming pool complex until news of the gunman's death was confirmed.

Officials immediately began providing counselling to the distraught students, some of whom tried to contact their parents by mobile phone to tell them what was happening.

German President Horst Koehler joined in those sending condolences, as did European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who described the shooting spree as a "senseless" act of violence. (dpa)