Wild boar caught strolling through Berlin shopping mall

Shoppers at a Berlin mall were in for a surprise on Friday morning when they suddenly came face-to-face with a wild boar, leading police to temporarily shut down the building.

Officers used pallets and riot shields to force the animal back outside after cordoning off the mall in the outer south-eastern neighbourhood of Köpenick, a spokesman said.

A team of animal keepers and a vet from a nearby zoo was initially deployed to the scene to assist in the operation, equipped with blowpipes, tranquillizer guns and wooden shields.

However, they found it impossible to sedate the animal "due to the layout of the premises," a spokeswoman for the zoo said.

It is not uncommon to encounter wild boars on the outskirts of Berlin, which is home to many parks and forests.

A particularly brazen specimen made headlines a few years ago when it disturbed visitors at a beach on a lake in western Berlin that is particularly popular with naked bathers.

A viral photograph taken during the rampage at Teufelssee shows a nude man chasing a wild boar making off with his laptop.

Many German beaches and lakes have nudist sections - locally referred to as Freikörperkultur or FKK which roughly translates as free body culture, or naturism - where bathers are supposed to shed their clothes.