In the German city of Hamburg, as a result of the shooting in the meeting hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, seven people were killed and several others were injured, according to the police.
The attacker is said to have acted alone in Thursday’s attack and is also presumed dead. His motives are unknown.
Dramatic footage has now surfaced that appears to show the suspect shooting through a hall window.
The attacker is a former member of a religious community between the ages of 30 and 40, Der Spiegel magazine reported.
The victims have not yet been identified, work at the crime scene continues.
Police say they found a dead person at the scene who they believe may have been the attacker, and the investigation is ongoing.
They were called at about 9:15 p.m. local time (8:15 p.m. GMT) on Thursday to reports of a shooting at a building on Deelböge Street in the Gross Borstel district, police spokesman Holger Wehren said.
According to him, the police who arrived found people who “may have suffered serious gunshot wounds, some of them fatal.”
“Officers also heard a gunshot from the top of the building and went upstairs where they also found a person. So far, we have no signs that any of the criminals escaped.”
People are believed to have gathered, probably for a Bible study, when the shooting started around 9:00 p.m. local time.
Gregor Misbach, who filmed the gunman shooting through the first-floor window, told Bild newspaper: “I heard loud shots, I went to the window to take pictures of the situation. I saw a man with a firearm shooting at the window and took it down.”
Lara Bauch, a 23-year-old student who lives nearby, told the DPA news agency that “there were about four bursts of fire – several shots in each burst – with breaks that lasted from about 20 seconds to a minute.”
She said that from her window she saw a person running frantically from the first floor to the second. “The man was dressed in dark clothes and was moving fast,” she added.
At approximately 9:00 p.m. local time, a message was sent to the federal warning app NINAwarn that “one or more unknown assailants were shooting at people in the church.”
Local residents were ordered to stay indoors during the police operation.
Footage shows police escorting people out of the meeting hall, some to ambulances.
Hamburg Interior Minister Andy Grote said on Twitter that a special police force and a large number of officers had been sent to the scene.
The reasons for the shooting remain “still completely unclear.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it a “cruel act of violence” on Friday morning, saying his thoughts were with the victims and their families.
In a statement, the community of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany said it was “deeply saddened by the horrific attack on its members in the Kingdom Hall in Hamburg after a religious service.”
The mayor of Hamburg, Peter Chenscher, spoke of his shock and expressed his condolences to the families of the victims.
Forensic experts in white suits worked all night in the brightly lit interior of the meeting house.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are members of a Christian religious movement founded in the USA at the end of the 19th century.
In its latest report for 2022, the movement says there are about 8.7 million Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide, including about 170,000 in Germany.
It is believed that there are about 4,000 Witnesses in Hamburg.
Members of the movement are probably best known for their door-to-door evangelistic work; witnessing from house to house and offering Bible literature.
Despite its Christian foundation, the group believes that traditional Christian churches have deviated from the true teachings of the Bible and are not working in full harmony with God.
