German police have urged residents of Berlin’s southern suburbs to stay indoors, as they scoured the area for a wild animal on the loose, apparently a lioness, writes Al Jazeera.

Police first issued the alarm in the early morning hours on Thursday, after two people saw what appeared to be a lioness chasing a wild boar down a street less than 5km from the German capital.

“Around midnight, we received a message hard to imagine. Two passersby who saw one animal chasing another. One was a wild boar and the other apparently a wild animal, a lioness. The two men recorded a video on their phones and even experienced policemen had to concede that it was probably a lioness”, - Daniel Keip, Brandenburg police spokesperson, told RBB radio.

Berlin police then alerted the public to the beast’s presence, initially putting the southwestern suburbs on alert and then expanding the area of the search.