A shooting at a Jehovah’s Witnesses hall, Hamburg left eight people dead, including the perpetrator, German police stated Thursday.
Police have not given a death toll, but multiple local media outlets reported that the shooting left seven dead while eight were seriously injured.
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, a police spokesman at the scene said.
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Police tweeted that “several people were seriously injured, some even fatally” in the incident.
“At the moment there is no reliable information on the motive of the crime,” police said, urging people not to speculate.
An alarm for “extreme danger” in the area had been sounded using a catastrophe warning app, but Germany’s Federal Office for Civil Protection lifted it shortly after 3 a.m. local time.
Hamburg police tweeted early Friday: “The police measures in the surrounding area are gradually being discontinued. Investigations into the background of the crime are continuing.”
The port city’s mayor, Peter Tschentscher, expressed shock at the shooting on Twitter.
The Tunisian attacker, a failed asylum seeker, was a supporter of the Islamic State jihadist group.
A spokesperson for Scholz, Christiane Hoffmann, referred to it as a “shooting rampage” rather than a suspected terrorist attack.
“The suspected perpetrator shot at several people during an event held by the congregation,” she told reporters in Berlin. “Our thoughts in these difficult hours are with the relatives, families and friends of the victims and with those who were wounded by this act. We wish the wounded a swift recovery.”
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.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are part of an international church, founded in the United States in the 19th century and headquartered in Warwick, New York. It claims a worldwide membership of about 8.7 million, with about 170,000 in Germany.
Members are known for their evangelistic efforts that include knocking on doors and distributing literature in public squares. The denomination’s practices include a refusal to bear arms, receive blood transfusions, salute a national flag or participate in secular government.
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.
(AFP)
