A gunman believed to have been acting alone has killed several people in a Jehovah's Witness church in the German city of Hamburg, according to police.
Police said eight people died in the attack, including the gunman, as they focused their investigation on the motive.
The Bild newspaper reported on Thursday that seven people were dead and eight wounded in the shooting at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witness in the northern city that is home to Germany's biggest port.
"According to the current state of affairs, we assume that there is one perpetrator," police said in a message on Twitter.
"Police activities in the surrounding area are being successively discontinued. Investigations into the motives behind the crime are continuing."
Earlier, Germany's DPA news agency, citing a reporter on the scene, said that residents in the city's northern Alsterdorf district had received warnings on their mobile phones of a "life-threatening situation" and that streets had been sealed off.
Television footage showed dozens of police cars as well as fire engines blocking off streets and some people, wrapped in blankets, being led by emergency service workers into a bus.
"We heard shots," one unidentified witness told reporters. "There were 12 continuous shots," he said. "Then we saw how people were taken away in black bags."
Police said they had received a call soon after 9pm local time and officers arrived at the scene to find several people seriously injured and some dead.
"Then they heard a shot from above, they went upstairs and found one further person," said a police spokesperson.
The mayor of Hamburg expressed shock for Thursday's bloodshed.
"I extend my deepest sympathy to the families of the victims. The forces are working at full speed to pursue the perpetrators and clarify the background," Peter Tschentscher said on Twitter.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are part of an international Christian religion founded in the United States in the 19th century and headquartered in New York.
The organisation claims a worldwide membership of about 8.7 million, with about 170,000 in Germany.
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.
ABC/wires
