Updated | Five people killed in Switzerland shooting

Four people were murdered in a shooting after a gunman opened fire in a tiny town in northern Switzerland before the gunman turned the weapon on himself, police said.

Officers were called to the northern town of Wuerenlingen after gunshots were heard shortly after 11pm on Saturday night. Upon arrival, “several” bodies were found lying outside a residential building in Wuerenlingen, a community of some 4,500 people north-west of Zurich, police said in a statement.

Swiss police said the presumed killer, a 36-year-old Swiss national who was separated from his wife and the couple's three children, shot dead his father-in-law, mother-in-law and brother-in-law. Police said the gunamn lived in another part of Switzerland and was known to police for violent behaviour.

The gunman also reported that the gunman also shot a neighbour who tried to intervene. The killer then turned the weapon on himself and committed suicide, police chief Michael Leupold said at a news conference.

Swiss police believe that the incident had been triggered by a family argument, but the motive is not yet confirmed. 

A neighbour, who was also not identified, told Swiss newspaper Blick she heard four shots in succession fired very quickly, then two further shots after a pause. She had heard no screams, the newspaper reported.

When police arrived there were bodies 'lying inside and out', said a local police source.

“All were adults, and the gunman is thought to be among them. He is thought to have turned his gun on himself.”

The incident has shocked the residents of Wuerenlingen, a town of some 4,500 people northwest of Zurich, near the German border. It took place just a few hundred metres from the scene of the last multiple murder which rocked the small town thirty years ago.