Asia-Pacific

One dead, three injured in Australia drive-by shooting

Shots were fired from car into a crowd outside a Melbourne nightclub

A police officer works at the scene of a multiple shooting outside a nightclub in Prahran, Melbourne. Photograph: AAP Image/Ellen Smith/via REUTERS

Sun Apr 14 2019 - 06:53

A security guard has died and three men have been wounded in a drive-by shooting in the Australian city of Melbourne.

Police said there was no suggestion yet the attack was terror-related.

Sunday’s shooting took place around 3.20am in the entertainment district of Melbourne’s southeastern suburb of Prahran, police said. Three security guards and a man queueing to enter were taken to hospital with gunshot injuries.

“It would appear that shots have been discharged from a car in this area into a crowd standing outside the nightclub,” Insp Andrew Stamper said.

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The victims suffered “horrific injuries” from a weapon fired in close proximity, he added.

One guard died in hospital, another man was in critical condition and two escaped life-threatening injuries. One guard was shot in the face, the Age newspaper said.

Bloodstained clothing and bullet casings littered the street outside the entrance to the second-storey Love Machine nightclub early on Sunday.

Police referred to a black Porsche SUV that was later found burnt-out in the north Melbourne suburb of Wollert.

Australia has some of the world’s toughest gun control laws, adopted after its worst mass murder, when a gunman killed 35 people at Port Arthur in the island state of Tasmania in 1996.

A murder-suicide last year in Western Australia that killed seven members of a family was the country’s worst mass shooting since the Port Arthur case.

Neighbouring New Zealand has adopted legislation to ban semi-automatic firearms and assault rifles after its worst peacetime shooting in March that killed 50 worshippers in two mosques in the city of Christchurch. – Reuters

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