Doug Stanglin

USA TODAY

Police shot and killed a masked gunman Thursday who had opened fire in a cinema and taken hostages in a small town in western Germany, according to German authorities.

Initial reports in the German media indicated that at least 25 people had been injured in the melee, possibly by tear gas, but police said later that no one was hurt.

The incident erupted in the Kinopolis movie theater in the town of Viernheim, about 45 miles south of Frankfurt, according to the Associated Press.

Hesse state’s interior minister, Peter Beuth, said special forces had "fought and killed" the man, who had been visibly confused and had fired at least four shots inside the cinema with a rifle, the German news agency DPA reports.

Beuth said the elite police stormed the cinema from the rear.

According to witnesses, just after 2 p.m., the masked man entered the theater. A theater employee thought it was just a filmgoer: "It's often that filmgoers dress up to match the film," Guri Blakaj, 21, told German broadcaster, N-TV. But after he took a gun out and forced employees to lie on the ground, Blakaj realized, "this is serious."

"If you have a gun to your head, you're scared," the employee added, noting that the man held a long gun and wore a balaclava. He did not want money.

The suspect then barricaded himself and up to 40 movie-goers in the theater before police stormed the building.

Blakaj said the suspect was "small, black-haired and between 18 and 22 years old" and looked confused.

Authorities did not immediately identify the gunman or suggest a possible motive. Darmstadt police spokesman Bernd Hochstädter: "There is no indication that it could be someone with a Islamist background."

Another witness, Oguzhan Turk, a salesman in a store next to the movie theater, told N-TV that a cinema employee came running out in a panic, said she was threatened with a gun and asked him to call police.

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Mass shootings are rare in Germany. Gun laws were tightened in 2009 after a rampage by a teen gunman.