Several people have been killed in a shooting at a Jehovah’s Witness centre in Hamburg, with the gunman believed to be among the dead, German police said death toll has not been given, but multiple local media outlets reported that the shooting had left seven dead and eight seriously injured.
The first emergency calls were made around 2015 GMT after shots rang out at the building in the city’s northern district of Gross Borstel, a police spokesman at the scene said.
Police tweeted that “several people were seriously injured, some even fatally” in the incident.
“At the moment there is no reliable information on the motive of the crime,” police said, urging people not to speculate.
An alarm for “extreme danger” in the area had been sounded using a catastrophe warning app, but Germany’s Federal Office for Civil Protection lifted it shortly after 3 am local time.
Hamburg police tweeted early Friday: “The police measures in the surrounding area are gradually being discontinued. Investigations into the background of the crime are continuing.”
The port city’s mayor, Peter Tschentscher, expressed shock at the shooting on Twitter.
Sending his sympathies to the victims’ families, he said emergency services were doing their utmost to clarify the situation.
