Three Dead in Swiss Factory Shooting

Two people were killed and seven others wounded when a gunman opened fire in a Swiss factory on Wednesday, police said, adding the gunman also died.

"There are three dead and seven wounded, a number of them seriously," local police spokesman Simon Kopp was quoted as saying by news portal Blick.ch.

The shooter was among those who died, he added without elaborating.

Three helicopters from the Swiss emergency service REGA evacuated four seriously wounded people from the scene of the shooting at the Kronospan wood panel plant in Menznau, near Lucerne, a spokesman told Agence France Presse.

A police statement said that the perimeter had been sealed off, and that a hotline had been set up for families and employees.

A major police deployment was under way, the statement said, without giving details of the number of dead and injured.

A witness quoted by the local newspaper the Luzerner Zeitung said that an individual had entered the factory canteen and opened fire.

"This is a tragedy," Munzau's mayor, Adrian Duss, told AFP.

Owned by Austrian group Kronospan, the factory is the top employer in Munzau, employing around 400 people.

Switzerland has a longstanding tradition of gun ownership, and ranks third in the world for the number of guns per inhabitant, after the United States and Yemen.

On January 2, a 33-year-old drifter wielding two weapons killed three women and wounded two men in the village of Daillon in southern Switzerland.