Shots were fired Thursday night at a building used by Jehovah’s Witnesses in the northern German city of Hamburg, and an unspecified number of people were killed or injured, police said. The Hamburg city administration said the shooting took place in the Groß Borstel district.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many victims there were, but Hamburg police tweeted that “several people were seriously injured, some even fatally.”
“We only know that several people died here, several people were injured, they were taken to hospitals,” said police spokesman Holger Vehren.
Click here to view related media.
Click to expand
He said he had no information on the severity of the wounded’s injuries.
Local media footage showed a large police presence outside the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a modern three-story building.
Vehren said police were alerted to the shooting around 9:15 p.m. and were on the scene quickly. He said after officers arrived and found people with obvious gunshot wounds on the ground floor, they heard a shot from an upper floor and found a person mortally wounded, who may have been a gunman, upstairs. He said the police didn’t have to use their firearms.
Vehren said there was no evidence a gunman was on the run and that it was likely the perpetrator was either inside the building or among the dead. After saying early Friday morning that they were still working to verify that no other perpetrators were involved, police determined said later It seemed that there was only one shooter.
Police also said a motive was not immediately clear. “The background is still completely unclear,” said Vehren.
The police had no information about the event that was taking place in the building when the shooting took place.
“The reports from Alsterdorf/Groß Borstel are shocking,” tweeted Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher. “My deepest condolences to the families of the victims.”
Student Laura Bauch, who lives nearby, said “there were about four shoots,” German news agency dpa reported. “There were always multiple shots in those periods, roughly 20 seconds to a minute apart,” she said.
She said she looked out her window and saw a person running from the ground floor to the second floor of the hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Gregor Miesbach, who lives within sight of the building, was alerted by shots and filmed a figure entering the building through a window. Shots can be heard from inside. The figure later apparently emerges from the hall, can be seen in the courtyard, and then fires more shots inside.
Miesbach told German television news agency NonstopNews he heard at least 25 gunshots. When police arrived, a final shot followed about five minutes later, he said.
Trending News