Berlin: German police said Tuesday they were investigating a doctor suspected of killing several mainly elderly patients, without indicating the number of potential victims.
Police and prosecutors in Itzehoe said in a statement they had opened an inquiry into the deaths of the patients.
Investigators were “reviewing previous deaths” linked to the doctor from the town of Pinneberg in northern Germany, just outside Hamburg, they said.
“Several autopsies and exhumations” had already been performed but it was expected to be “several weeks” before the results of the forensic analysis were available.
Authorities said they would not specify the number of potential cases involved in the meantime. But they said the patients were “mostly elderly”.
The allegations recall two other recent cases in Germany, where medical professionals have been charged with killing patients.
In April, Berlin prosecutors charged a palliative care doctor with the murder of 15 patients aged between 25 and 94 years old.
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And in March, a nurse went on trial in Aachen accused of injecting 26 patients with large doses of sedatives or painkillers, resulting in the deaths of nine.
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