Austrian police find body of alleged gunman after farmhouse siege

Austrian police believe they have found the body of a gunman suspected of killing four people, after they stormed the farmhouse some 40 miles west of Vienna where the man was holed up, according to BBC News.

Regional police spokesman Roland Scherscher told the Associated Press that the charred body was found late Tuesday "in a compartment behind a double wall of one of the buildings on the farm grounds."

Scherscher said experts still had to identify the corpse, but Austrian authorities believe it is the gunman and that he set himself on fire. Police named the suspect as Alois Huber, 55, according to the AP.

Some 100 police and special forces had been searching the area throughout the night. 

The gunman had earlier allegedly shot and killed a paramedic and two policemen, then taken a third to the house in the village of Melk as a hostage, according to Austrian officials cited by NBC News. The body of the third policeman was later found at the property.

Police had attempted to arrest the suspect for poaching Monday night, the officials said, but he opened fire on them from his car. He waited until an ambulance arrived, shot the paramedic and fled on foot, before a second police team approached him. He killed one officer and escaped in the police car with another officer held captive.

There then began a long stand-off at the farmhouse in Melk, Lower Austria, where the suspect had barricaded himself inside. Officers said they were fired at as they surrounded the property and eventually stormed the building.

Huber was rumored to be a deerhunter who decapitated the animals he hunts and hadbeen sought by the authorities for years, said the Telegraph. This information could not be independently confirmed.