Berlin residents have reported hearing lions’ roars in the middle of the night as the desperate search for a lioness that has been prowling through the city continues.
Hundreds of German police officers armed with guns are scouring the southern districts of the capital today after two locals saw the escaped lioness chasing a wild boar down in the Kleinmachnow suburb in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Last night, locals reported seeing the lioness and hearing a lions’ roars in the nearby Zehlendorf area near the city limits, Berlin police said.
Officers equipped with guns, night-vision goggles and drones, scoured the area throughout the night, but said they couldn’t find the lioness as the search continues today.
Residents living in the southern districts of the city – Kleinmachnow, Teltow and Stahnsdorf – have been advised to stay in their homes and to keep all doors windows closed. But some defiant Berliners decided to defy the orders today and walk their dogs in a forest in the Zehlendorf area.
Video on Twitter appeared to show a lioness wandering through foliage in Kleinmachnow
Police cars drive out of the forest where the predatory cat is supposed to be
Panzers! German police use a Survivor ‘panzerwagen’, an armoured vehicle, amid a search for a rogue lioness in the south of Berlin, on July 20, 2023
Residents living in the southern districts of the city – Kleinmachnow, Teltow and Stahnsdorf – have been advised to stay in their homes and to keep all doors windows closed. But some defiant Berliners decided to defy the orders today and walk their dogs in a forest in the Zehlendorf area (pictured)
The danger area where police believe a lioness is roaming the streets of Berlin
There have been a series of sightings of the lioness – by locals, police officers and firefighters – but each time, the predator escapes from their view and they are unable to trace it again.
German police spokesman Daniel Keip said: ‘In the summer, you often hear reports of crocodiles in swimming lakes and then it turns out all it was, was a big duck. In this case, it’s obviously totally real.
‘We’re dealing with a lioness that’s roaming freely through Teltow, Stahnsdorf and Kleinmachnow.’
At around 7pm last night, another sighting of the lioness in a forest by Kleinmachnow district prompted a flurry of activity by police officers.
‘We’re in a hot phase right now, she was just seen,’ a police officer told a local resident, reports German newspaper Bild.
Joggers were barred from entering the woodland by officers, as the search appeared to be ‘heating up’ in the evening with one officer screaming ‘get out of the wood, quickly’ to runners.
Police have been joined by professional hunters and vets, armed with tranquilising guns and pistols, in an attempt to safely capture the lioness – believed to be a private pet.
‘It can’t go on like this for days,’ the mayor of Kleinmachnosw, Michael Grubert, said of the large-scale police operation.
No zoos have reported a missing lioness, leading to questions about where the animal could have came from.
Police were first alerted early on Thursday after two people saw what appeared to be a lioness chasing a wild boar down a street less than (three miles) from the German capital.
Hunters and vets were reportedly helping track down the animal in Germany
A woman carries a tranquilizer gun as members from the veterinary office search for the lioness
The two passersby spotted the feline around midnight in the Kleinmachnow suburb, southwest of Berlin.
They shared mobile phone footage of the animal with police, who believe the images are genuine, Kleinmachnow mayor Michael Grubert told a press conference.
‘Even experienced officers had to conclude that it was probably a lioness,’ a police spokesperson told local broadcaster RBB.
The animal was later also spotted by police officers themselves, said Kerstin Schroeder, police spokeswoman in the Brandenburg region around Berlin.
Local authorities were seen driving armoured vehicles – ‘panzerwagens’ – through residential areas as a helicopter with thermal imaging circles overhead.
Kleinmachnow mayor Michael Grubert said it was not the time ‘to go jogging in the woods’.
A police spokesperson was forced to admit: ‘We don’t know where it came from.’
Since no zoos or circuses have reported a missing lioness, police believe she must be an escaped pet.
Despite a massive operation involving over 100 police officers as well as drones, helicopters and thermal-imaging cameras, there was still no sign of the animal by Thursday afternoon.
