Police swarmed a town in northern Switzerland on Monday and a manhunt was underway for a man who attacked and wounded five people with a chainsaw.

Police said they had identified the suspect, describing him as about 6 feet, 2 inches tall, bald and with an unkempt appearance. He was believed to be driving a Volkswagen vehicle with Swiss plates.

Police warned "the suspect is dangerous" but added "this case is not a terrorist act." They said it wasn't clear whether he still had the chainsaw.

Get Breaking News Delivered to Your Inbox

Swiss authorities identified the suspect as 51-year-old Franz Wrousis, whom they said has two previous convictions for contraventions of weapons laws.

Prosecutor Peter Sticher said Wrousis had no fixed address but had previously registered himself as living in the southeastern Swiss canton (state) of Graubuenden.

Cindy Beer, a spokesperson for the police department in Schaffhausen, in northern Switzerland near the German border, told SRF television that police were alerted at 10.39 a.m. Monday (0839 GMT) to the incident. She said "we can't say exactly what happened at this point."

She added: "We just know that a person wounded several people." The man's whereabouts are currently unknown.

Swiss police told the Reuters news agency that five people were injured in the attack, including two who were seriously wounded. Local media said one man was taken to hospital with a severe head wound.

Schaffhausen is a city of about 36,000 people north of Zurich, near the border with Germany.