As many as seven people were killed apparently including the perpetrator also with an unborn, according to cops and several more were injured in a shooting in a Jehovah’s Witness hall in Hamburg, Germany, on Thursday night, in a rare mass shooting in the country, reports agencies.
The police, including tactical and bomb disposal units, were on the scene late Thursday, and the injured were rushed to local hospitals.
Little was immediately known about the assailant, and the Hamburg police said early Friday that they believed there was just one.
“All we know is that several people died here and that several people have been injured and have been brought to hospitals,” Holger Vehren, a Hamburg police spokesman, said.
The shooting took place at a Jehovah`s Witnesses Kingdom Hall in the Gross Borstel district at around 9 p.m. local time (0800 UTC/GMT).
Police were alerted to the incident at about 9:15 p.m. and arrived at the scene quickly because they were "coincidentally very, very near," a spokesperson said.
There had been an event at the hall at the time of the shooting, and many abandoned winter jackets could be seen hanging in the foyer of the three-story building in local news footage.
The police were first called to the scene at 9:15 p.m. local time. When they arrived several minutes later, they found the dead and the wounded and heard a final shot on the top floor of the building, Mr. Vehren said.
Peter Tschentscher, the mayor of Hamburg, promised that authorities would work quickly to secure the crime scene and reconstruct the assault.
“My deepest sympathy goes to the relatives of the victims,” he posted on Twitter.
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