13:34,

YEREVAN, JULY 21, ARMENPRESS. Residents on the south-western outskirts of Berlin are being urged to stay indoors after overnight sightings of a “loose, dangerous animal”, suspected to be an escaped lioness, the Guardian reports. 

Brandenburg police advised people living in the districts of Kleinmachnow, Stahnsdorf and Teltow on the borders of the German capital to refrain from walking in the woods and to keep pets or farm animals indoors on Thursday. Nurseries were allowed to open but were urged to avoid letting children play outdoors.

Authorities are using helicopters, drones and thermal imaging cameras to track down the big cat, which police believed was resting in a wooded area. 

Police said at a midday press conference that two officers had seen the animal in two separate instances overnight, but that there been no further sightings since. Reports of a sighting in the Zehlendorf district, inside Berlin’s borders, had turned out to be a false lead.

Fire services in Brandenburg said the large animal was “presumably a lioness”. However, the director of a circus in the Teltow area told local media he was not aware of any lions being held in circuses or private zoos in the area and said the animal could be a misidentified Caucasian shepherd dog.