A shooting at a Jehovah's Witnesses centre in the German city of Hamburg has left eight people dead, including the suspected gunman, police said Friday, as the motive for the attack remained unclear.
Several more people were injured in the attack on Thursday evening at the Kingdom Hall building in the port city of Hamburg, where Jehovah's Witnesses members were attending a religious service.
"Eight people were fatally injured, apparently including the suspected perpetrator," Hamburg police said in a statement, adding that several other people were hurt, "some seriously".
The gunman, a 35-year-old German citizen and former Jehovah's Witness, used a semi-automatic pistol he had legally owned since December in the shooting on Thursday evening, a Hamburg state prosecutor said at a joint news conference with police.
The victims included four men and two women, and an unborn female child, the prosecutor said. Hamburg police said the mother survived.
Officials said the motive remained unknown, but a political reason had been ruled out. Police who raided his flat after the shooting found 15 loaded magazines of ammunition.
The officials said about 50 people were at an event held in the Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall in the Alsterdorf district of the city when the shooting started.
When police arrived, the shooter ran to the floor above and shot himself, the officials said, praising police for a quick response they said possibly avoided more deaths.
‘Brutal act of violence’
Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the "brutal act of violence" and said his thoughts were with the victims and their loved ones.
The Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany association said it was "deeply saddened by the horrific attack on its members".
The first emergency calls were made around 2015 GMT after shots rang out at the building in the city's northern district of Gross Borstel.
An alarm for "extreme danger" in the area was sounded using a catastrophe warning app, but Germany's Federal Office for Civil Protection lifted it shortly after 3am local time.
The port city's mayor, Peter Tschentscher, expressed shock at the shooting on Twitter.
Bible study group
The attack took place at the Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom Hall building, a nondescript, three-storey building where members had gathered for a religious service.
There are about 175,000 people in Germany, including 3,800 in Hamburg, who are Jehovah's Witnesses, a US Christian movement set up in the late 19th century that preaches non-violence and is known for door-to-door evangelism.
The first officers at the scene found several lifeless bodies and seriously wounded people, police said.
Hamburger Abendblatt reported that 17 unhurt people, who had been at the event, were being attended to by the fire brigade.
Hit by attacks
Germany has been rocked by several attacks in recent years, both by jihadists and far-right extremists.
Among the deadliest committed by Islamist extremists was a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 12 people.
The Tunisian attacker, a failed asylum seeker, was a supporter of the Islamic State jihadist group.
Europe's most populous nation remains a target for jihadist groups in particular because of its participation in the anti-Islamic State coalition in Iraq and Syria.
Between 2013 and 2021, the number of Islamists considered dangerous in the country had multiplied by five to 615, according to interior ministry data.
But Germany has also been hit by several far-right assaults in recent years, sparking accusations that the government was not doing enough to stamp out neo-Nazi violence.
In February 2020, a far-right extremist shot dead 10 people and wounded five others in the central German city of Hanau.
And in 2019, two people were killed after a neo-Nazi tried to storm a synagogue in Halle on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)
