Shots were fired at a building used by Jehovah’s Witnesses in the northern German city of Hamburg on Thursday night, killing or wounding several people, police said.
The shooting took place in the district of Gross Borstel, several kilometers (miles) north of the center of Germany’s second largest city. “We only know that several people have died here; several people are injured, they have been taken to hospitals,” said police spokesman Holger Vehren.
He said he did not have information on the severity of the injuries sustained by the injured. The scene of the shooting was the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a modern and angular three-story building next to a car repair shop.
Vehren said police were called to the shooting around 9:15 p.m. and they were there quickly. He said after officers arrived and found people on the ground floor with apparent gunshot wounds, they heard a gunshot upstairs and found a fatally wounded man upstairs who may have been the shooter. He said the police did not have to use their firearms.
Vehren said there was no indication the gunman was on the run and that it seemed likely the perpetrator was either in the building or among the dead. Two witnesses interviewed by n-tv, whose names were not given, said they heard 12 shots. Police had no information about what was going on in the building at the time of the shooting.
They also had no immediate information about a possible motive. Vehren said “the background is still completely unclear”. Hamburg mayor Peter Tschentscher tweeted that the news was “shocking” and offered his condolences to the victims’ relatives.
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 about 8.7 million members worldwide, including about 170,000 in Germany.
Members are known for their evangelistic efforts, which include knocking on doors and distributing literature in public squares. The denomination’s distinctive practices include refusing to bear arms, receive blood transfusions, salute the national flag, or participate in secular government.
