The gunman fled to the first floor [do edifício onde os membros da comunidade estavam reunidos numa sessão de oração] and committed suicide”said the interior minister of the city of Hamburg, Andy Grote, adding that the victims included a woman who was seven months pregnant.
On the other hand, the police added that the alleged creator of the shots is a former member of Jehovah’s Witnesses, an organization with which he apparently had run into conflict.
“But there are no indications of a terrorist context”said a representative of the German public prosecutor’s office at a press conference.
Police said they were alerted to the shooting at 9:15 p.m. (8:15 p.m. in Lisbon) on Thursday and heard a gunshot on an upper floor of the building after arriving at the scene.
A police spokesperson told journalists there were “indications that the perpetrator of the attack” may be inside the building, “possibly even among the dead”.
The intervention troops “very quickly entered the building and found dead and seriously injured”, explains the spokesman, who does not put forward any possible motives for the shooting.
According to the daily Bild, the shooting caused “a massacre” and left at least seven dead and eight seriously injured.
The German news agency DPA reported that rescue teams removed 18 people, who escaped unharmed, from a Jehovah’s Witnesses building.
The Hamburg city council said the shooting took place in the Gross Brush district of northern Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city, at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a modern three-story building.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has already deplored the “brutal act of violence” and stressed that his thoughts are with the victims and their families.
Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser also responded on Twitter, saying she was “appalled by the horrific act of violence”.
The community of Jehovah’s Witnesses also said it was “deeply saddened” by the attack.
“The religious community is deeply saddened by the terrible death of its members […] in Hamburg”he said in a statement published on the “site” itself.
The mayor of Hamburg, Peter Tschentscher, expressed his solidarity with the victims in a message on Twitter after the news, which he found shocking.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are part of an international church founded in the United States in the 19th century and headquartered in Warwick, New York, claiming a worldwide membership of about 8.7 million people, with about 170,000 in Germany.
In recent years, German authorities have been very alert to a dual terrorist threat, from Islamic and right-wing extremism.
Germany has fallen victim to attacks by Islamic extremist movements, most notably one involving a truck claimed by the Islamic State group (IS) that killed 12 in Berlin in December 2016, the deadliest of its kind committed on German soil.
Germans remain a target for Islamic extremist groups, particularly because of the country’s involvement in the coalition against IS in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
Since 2013 and until the end of 2021, the number of Muslims considered dangerous in Germany has increased fivefold to 615, the German Interior Ministry reported.
Following a warning from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), German authorities announced on January 8 the arrest of two Iranians suspected of planning a chemical attack involving ricin and cyanide.
Another threat is the far right, following several deadly attacks in recent years against religious communities or sites in the country.
In the racist attack in Hanau, near Frankfurt (west), in February 2020, a German involved in a conspiracy movement killed nine youths, all of them of foreign origin.
Between 2000 and 2007, a neo-Nazi group called NSU had already murdered nine migrants and a police officer. Two of the members committed suicide before being arrested and the third was sentenced to life in prison.
Source: DN
