Stephen Jessel in Paris: He shot himself as the police entered the hotel

Reports say that as police entered the hotel in the town of Strasssen, the man shot himself with one of the weapons he was known to be carrying.

Günter Hermann Ewen, a 36-year-old German convicted rapist, was the suspect at the centre of a huge police operation in northern France.

A 48-hour manhunt with helicopters and hundreds of police began on Sunday, after shots were fired into a crowd at the Xanadu disco in Dillingen in southwest Germany.

Wanted: Guenter Hermann Ewen

A disco employee and a guest died and three others were wounded.

The trail of bloodshed led from the disco to a nearby home where a Frenchman and his British wife were killed, and their 11-year-old daughter seriously wounded by shots from a pump-action shotgun.

Fleeing across the border to Sierck-les-Bains, the gunman shot dead a 39-year-old Frenchman, who had tried to stop the gunman from stealing his car.

Another driver, who had earlier refused to give up his car to the gunman, was wounded.

French and German police linked the Dillingen killings to the murder in France.

Local reporter Christian Knopfler: "People will be relieved"

An international arrest warrant was issued, and 200 French officers and border guards joined in the hunt.

Police found two cars abandoned along the way, but there were no other traces of the suspect.

Fear gripped villagers living around the eastern French border, with some people reportedly barricading themselves in their homes.