German investigators said on Tuesday that they were examining the case of a doctor who is suspected of killing several patients.

The public prosecutor's office and police in the northern German town of Itzehoe said in a statement they were "currently investigating a doctor from the Pinneberg district on initial suspicion of killing several patients, most of them elderly".

They said they were looking into "past deaths" and that a special commission had already performed "several autopsies and exhumations" as part of the probe.

In line with German privacy rules, the statement did not further identify the doctor from Pinneberg — which is located between Itzehoe and Hamburg — nor did it give any details on the number or identity of the possible victims.

"No details of the number of deaths investigated are currently being provided for reasons of investigative tactics," the statement said.

The investigators said the forensic medical examination and evaluation of the findings were expected to take several weeks.

In a separate case, a Berlin doctor was charged in April with the killings of 15 patients under palliative care.

The doctor was part of a nursing service's end-of-life care team and investigators say they’ve found evidence linking him to the deaths of 15 people between 22 September 2021, and 24 July last year.