Eight people were killed in a shootout at a Jehovah’s Witnesses center, in the German city of Hamburg, including a suspected gunman, the police said on Friday.
The motive for the attack is still unclear.
Several people were injured in an attack on a Kingdom Hall building in the port city of Hamburg on Thursday evening, where Jehovah’s Witnesses were attending a service.
“Eight people were fatally injured, including the alleged perpetrator,” Hamburg police said in a statement, adding that many more people were injured, “some seriously”.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said his thoughts were with the victims and their families.
The Association of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany said it was “deeply saddened by the horrific attack on its members”.
The first emergency calls were made around 2015 GMT after shots were fired at a building in the northern district of Gross Borstel. Hamburg Police are expected to provide an update at a midday press conference but previously said they were still working to determine the reason for the attack.
“There is currently no reliable information about the motive behind the crime, police said, urging people not to speculate.
The area was issued via a disaster warning app: “extreme danger”, but this was canceled by the Federal Office for Civil Protection shortly after 3 a.m. local time.
The mayor of the port city, Peter Tschentscher, expressed his shock at the shooting on Twitter.
The police asked the witnesses to come forward and upload any photos or videos in their possession to a special website.
Home Secretary Nancy Faeser said investigators were “working full time to establish the context” of the attack.
The weekly News Der Spiegel reported that the suspect in the attack was a former member of Jehovah’s Witnesses who was not a known extremist. The Journal, without citing a source, described him as a man in his 30s or 40s and said he was armed with a pistol.
Bible Study Group: The attack took place at the Kingdom Hall building of Jehovah’s Witnesses, an unspecified three-story building where members had gathered for worship. Some 175,000 people in Germany, including 3,800 in Hamburg, are Jehovah’s Witnesses, an American Christian movement founded in the late 19th century that preaches nonviolence and is known for home evangelism.
The first responders at the scene found several bodies and seriously injured people, police said. The Hamburger Abendblatt reported that 17 healthy people who attended the event were in the custody of the fire brigade. officers heard a gunshot “upstairs in the building” before finding the body where the noise was coming from, police said.
In a tweet on Friday morning, Hamburg police said they believed the body belonged to the attacker.
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