Australia: Drive-by shooting kills one at nightclub

Australian police said on Sunday that a drive-by shooting in the city of Melbourne has killed a security guard and wounded three men outside a nightclub.

Police said the incident occurred on Sunday morning at around 3:20 a.m. local time (1720 UTC Saturday) at the Love Machine club in the southeastern suburb of Prahran. The security guard, 37, died of his injuries in hospital, they said later. Two other security guards and a patron waiting to enter the nightclub also received gunshot injuries, with one man in critical condition.

The police told a televised news conference there was no suggestion yet that the shooting was terror-related.

"These things are still incredibly rare and there's nothing to indicate at the moment that this is part of a broader agenda," said Andrew Stamper from the police force of Victoria, the state of which Melbourne is the capital.

Australia has a low rate of gun crime, a fact most experts attribute to the tightening of laws on the possession of firearms following the massacre of 35 people on the island of Tasmania by a lone gunman in 1996.

Recently, neighboring New Zealand also strengthened its legislation on guns after an Australian white supremacist allegedly killed 50 people in attacks on two mosques in the city of Christchurch on March 15. Semi-automatic firearms and assault rifles are now banned in the country.

tj/ng (AP,dpa,Reuters)

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