by Fabian Bimmer
HAMBURG (Reuters) – A shooting on Thursday night at a Jehovah’s Witnesses center in Hamburg, northern Germany, left eight people dead, including the assailant, police said, and are now trying to determine motives for the attack.
German police will hold a press conference at 1100 GMT (12:00 noon Paris time) to give further details of the attack.
According to Spiegel magazine, the assailant was a former member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses community and was not known to the police as being an extremist.
According to the Bild newspaper, eight other people were injured in the shooting, which took place in the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses located in a northern district of Hamburg.
“At this time we assume there is only one assailant,” police previously said in a Twitter post.
“Police activities in the surrounding area have been gradually halted. The investigation to establish the motives for the crime is continuing.”
“Terrible news from Hamburg,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz tweeted on Friday morning, calling the attack a “savage act of violence”.
French President Emmanuel Macron sent France’s condolences to Germany.
“I send France’s condolences to the relatives of the victims and to all our German friends,” wrote Emmanuel Macron on Twitter.
German news agency DPA had earlier reported that residents of the Alsterdorf district in north Hamburg had received alerts to stay at home on their mobile phones and that streets had been closed.
Television footage showed dozens of police cars and fire engines blocking streets as people were evacuated by emergency services to buses.
“We heard gunshots,” a witness told reporters. “There were twelve successive shots. Then we saw people being carried in black bags,” he added.
Police said they received a call shortly after 9:00 p.m. (2000 GMT) and officers discovered several people seriously injured and dead when arriving at the scene.
“They then heard a shot coming from the floor where they discovered another person,” said a police spokesman.
Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher expressed his dismay.
“I send my deepest condolences to the families of the victims. Law enforcement is working hard to prosecute the perpetrators of the attack and establish their motives,” Peter Tschentscher wrote on Twitter.
(Reporting Jan Schwartz, Madeline Chambers, Sabine Wollrab, Emma-Victoria Farr; French version Camille Raynaud and Matthieu Protard, editing by Kate Entringer)
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