Eight people have died and more are seriously injured after a mass shooting in a Jehovah's Witness church.
The deaths include the alleged perpetrator and an unborn child is said to be among the dead and at least eight others were severely injured in Hamburg, Germany.
Police spokesman Holger Vehren said that after officers arrived and found people with apparent gunshot wounds on the ground floor, they heard a shot from an upper floor and found a fatally wounded person upstairs who may have been a shooter.
He said police did not have to use their firearms.
There was no word on a possible motive for Thursday night's attack, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a former Hamburg mayor, described as “a brutal act of violence.”
The killer is 35-year-old Philipp F who works in the business centre. Thomas Radszuweit, a Hamburg security official, said the suspected shooter was not previously known to authorities and there was no previous case against him.
Hamburg police chief Ralf Martin Meyer said the suspected shooter had a weapons license and legally owned a semi-automatic pistol.
According to the German magazine Spiegel, the suspect was a former member of the congregation that had gathered for a Bible study meeting at the centre.
Citing his website, Spiegel said Phillip F. grew up in Kempten in the Allgäu region in a strictly religious family. After he left high school, he trained as a bank clerk.
He settled in Hamburg after studying business administration and after living abroad on a number of occasions. On his website, he says he is "multicultural" and "a self-confessed European."
Soon after the violence began, residents in the Alsterdorf district received warnings on their mobile phones of a "life-threatening situation", the DPA news agency reported.
Ramon-Walter Essenwanger Martinez, 41, is a self-employed audio engineer in Hamburg and was horrified at the attack
Speaking to Mirror Online, he said: “I was looking at a social media group last night for Hamburg, where I get all my updates, and I learned that all these people had been shot – I found out just 20 minutes after it happened.”
“It was a terrible shock. I am from Lima in Peru and came to Germany in 2016, and there you do have violence, but it is not normally really connected to churches and religion.”
Gregor Miesbach, who lives within sight of the building, was alerted by the sound of shots and filmed a figure entering the building through a window. Shots can then be heard from inside.
The figure later apparently emerges from the hall, is seen in the courtyard and then fires more shots inside.
Miesbach told German television news agency NonstopNews that he heard at least 25 shots. After police arrived, one last shot followed about five minutes later, he said.
Police were using a thermal imaging camera onboard a helicopter to search the area.
Authorities earlier warned of an "extreme danger" and residents nearby were warned to leave their homes as the operation continued. They also instructed people to stay away from the area, reported to be near a Jet gas station.
The warning has since been lifted.
Local reports indicate the scene is a centre for Jehovah's witnesses and is located in the Alsterdorf area of the city in northern Germany and there are road cordons in place in Gross Borstel, Deelboege, and part of Eppendorf neighbourhoods.
Authorities have asked people not to speculate or spread rumours on the motive behind the shooting as there is "no reliable information" yet.
Hamburg's mayor Peter Tschentscher called the incident "shocking" and sent his "sincere condolences" to the victims.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said his thoughts were with the victims of the shooting in Hamburg.
He called it "a brutal act of violence".
Germany has been shaken by a number of shootings and violent attacks in the last few years.
In February 2020, a gunman with suspected far-right links shot dead nine people in the western town of Hanau before killing himself and his mother.
In October 2019, a gunman killed two people when he opened fire outside a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.
And at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 a Tunisian attacker killed 12 people.
