At least seven people were killed in a shooting at a Jehovah’s Witness center in Hamburg, northern Germany, city officials said, quoted by local media.
The event, which occurred on Thursday night, also resulted in serious injuries, the local police revealed through the social network Twitter, without specifying the number of victims.
Police said they were alerted to the shooting at 9:15 p.m. (8:15 p.m. in Lisbon) and that, after arriving at the scene, they heard a shot from an upper floor of the building.
A police spokesman told reporters that there was “evidence that the perpetrator of the attack” could be in the building, “possibly even among the dead.”
The intervention forces “entered the building very quickly and found dead and seriously injured there,” explained the spokesman, who did not advance possible reasons for the shooting.
According to the Bild newspaper, the shooting generated “a bloodbath” and resulted in at least seven deaths and eight serious injuries.
The German news agency dpa reported that it observed rescue teams evacuating 18 people, who escaped unharmed, from a building used by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The initial police statement had noted that there was no immediate indication if the shooter or shooters were fleeing.
Hamburg city authorities said the shooting took place in the Gross Borstel district of northern Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city, at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a modern three-story building.
Two witnesses, interviewed by the NTV station, said they heard 12 shots.
Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher expressed his solidarity with the victims following the “shocking” news in a message on Twitter.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are part of an international church, founded in the United States in the 19th century and headquartered in Warwick, New York, which has a worldwide membership of about 8.7 million people, with about 170,000 in Germany.
The German authorities have been on high alert in recent years in the face of a double terrorist threat, ‘jihadist’ and extreme right.
Germany has been the victim of ‘jihadist’ attacks, most notably a truck attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group that killed 12 people in December 2016 in Berlin, making it the deadliest ‘jihadist’ attack ever carried out on the ground. German.
The Germans continue to be a target for ‘jihadist’ groups, particularly for their involvement in the coalition fighting IS in Iraq and Syria and the one that was deployed in Afghanistan after 2001.
From 2013 to the end of 2021, the number of Muslims considered dangerous in Germany increased fivefold, reaching 615, according to the Interior Ministry. The number of Salafists is estimated at around 11,000, twice as many as in 2013.
Following an FBI alert, German authorities announced on January 8 the arrest of two Iranians suspected of preparing an “Islamic” chemical attack with ricin and cyanide.
Another threat looms over Germany, personified by the extreme right, after several deadly attacks in recent years against communities or religious sites.
In the racist attack in Hanau, near Frankfurt (west), perpetrated in February 2020, a German involved in the conspiracy movement killed nine young people, all of foreign origin.
Between 2000 and 2007, a neo-Nazi group called the NSU had already killed nine immigrants and one police officer. Two of its members committed suicide before being arrested and the third, a woman, was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Source: TSF
