A manhunt is under way in Vienna for an attacker who has shot one person dead and injured another.

Two people were found with gunshot wounds at around 1.30pm on Friday in the Lugeck area of the Austrian capital, police said in a statement.

The Vienna Rescue Service announced little more than 10 minutes after they had been called to the scene that one of the victims had died.

“A manhunt is currently underway,” a police spokesman added “Further circumstances are not yet clear.”

A police spokesman said the shooting appeared to be a “targeted criminal act” rather than part of a shooting spree, ruling out terrorism as a cause.

Officers have said the incident does not pose any immediate danger to the wider public.

The area where the shooting took place has been cordoned off as police helicopters hover overhead as part of the search.

The shooting is understood to have taken place in an alleyway that houses Figlmueller, a restaurant popular with tourists who flock to the city in the run-up to Christmas.

Harald Prochazka, the director of Figlmueller, told daily newspaper Oesterreich's online TV channel that three people involved in the shooting ate at the restaurant beforehand.

“Everything was in order. They also left the restaurant calmly together,” he said.

A witness who was interviewed on OE24 television, who called himself a Lithuanian journalist but didn't give his name, said he heard about 10 pistol shots and saw two people lying on the ground in a passage between two streets.

He said a third man was talking to one of those people in a Slavic language, but he couldn't say which one.