A massive manhunt is ongoing across northern Switzerland Sunday after a gunman or group of gunmen opened fire on a large annual techno rave early Saturday morning, leaving one 22-year-old woman dead and five other young people wounded, Swiss law enforcement officials have confirmed.
The attack unfolded shortly before 3 a.m. local time at the Aarauer Rave, a yearly electronic music event hosted at the Aarau racetrack roughly 50 kilometers outside Zurich. The event drew approximately 3,500 attendees between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, turning the normally quiet racecourse into a crowded celebration before the gunfire erupted.
Witnesses initially mistook the sounds of gunfire for fireworks, before multiple attendees realized the danger and began fleeing for cover. Many partygoers took shelter in a nearby gymnasium to wait out the violence, with video posted to social media by local residents showing empty, locked-down streets near the event site, with repeated bursts of gunfire audible in the background.
Local police confirmed in a post to X that the 22-year-old female victim died of her injuries at the scene. The five other wounded people — four men and one woman between the ages of 24 and 27 — were transported to area hospitals, with injuries ranging from minor to life-threatening. All victims are Swiss residents, authorities confirmed.
In the hours following the shooting, Swiss authorities launched a large-scale multi-agency response to locate the perpetrator or perpetrators. Armed police units were deployed along highways up to 30 kilometers from the attack site, an army helicopter was brought in to assist with the search over Aargau, the cantonal capital, and hundreds of police officers, rescue workers and medical personnel were dispatched to the area. Authorities have cordoned off the entire attack site to preserve evidence while the investigation proceeds, and have urged local residents to avoid the region. Police have also asked any attendees who captured photos or video of the incident to share the material with investigators to help advance the case.
As of Sunday afternoon, the identity of the attacker or attackers remains unknown, and law enforcement has not released details on how many suspects are being sought or what type of firearm was used in the attack. Authorities have also stated that no potential motive for the shooting has been confirmed, and that the full circumstances of the incident are still under active investigation.
The shooting marks a rare outbreak of deadly gun violence in Switzerland, a country with a long cultural tradition of widespread civilian gun ownership tied to its military reserve system. Under current Swiss law, army reservists are permitted to keep their service weapons at home, though they are required to store ammunition separately at government facilities. Unlike many European nations, Switzerland does not maintain a national public register of firearms, making it difficult to track the total number of civilian-held weapons. A 2017 study from the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey estimated that Swiss civilians held more than 2.3 million firearms, equal to roughly three guns for every 10 residents, ranking the country 16th globally in per capita gun ownership.
The last high-profile mass shooting in Switzerland occurred more than two decades ago in 2001, when a lone gunman killed 14 members of the cantonal parliament and local government in Zug, a city near Lucerne, before dying by suicide.