A shooting at a Jehovah’s Witness hall in Hamburg killed numerous people, and the gunman is likely to be among those murdered, according to German authorities on Thursday.
The incident occurred in the Grossborstel neighbourhood, with the first emergency contact coming in at 8.15 p.m., according to a police spokeswoman on the site.
“Many individuals were critically injured, some fatally,” according to authorities on Twitter.
“At the moment, there is no credible information on the purpose of the crime,” the post continued, urging the public not to speculate.
Using a disaster warning app, police warned residents of a “exceptional threat” in the area.
Police have advised residents to stay home and avoid the area. They also stated that the streets around the building had been blocked off.
Although police did not provide an exact figure, multiple German national media sites reported that at least six persons were killed.
Police were able to arrive at the scene promptly after receiving distress calls, according to a spokeswoman.
The first officers on the scene discovered multiple dead bodies and badly injured people.
They also heard a gunfire in the “upper section of the building” before locating a person in the vicinity.
“We have no evidence of a fleeing culprit,” stated a police spokeswoman.
Officers now have “indications that a perpetrator may have been in the building and may even be among the dead,” according to the report.
The person discovered in the upper part of the building was “probably” the offender, according to the spokeswoman.
On Twitter, the mayor of the port city state, Peter Tschentscher, expressed his horror at the shooting.
He expressed his condolences to the deceased’ families and stated that the emergency services were doing everything possible to clear up the situation.
Many terrorist and far-right extremist assaults have rocked Germany in recent years.
A lorry rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 was among the bloodiest acts done by Islamist extremists, killing 12 people.
The Tunisian attacker, a failed asylum seeker, backed ISIS.
Because of its membership in the anti-ISIS alliance in Iraq and Syria, Europe’s most populous nation remains a target for extremist groups.
Many far-right attacks have occurred in Germany in recent years, prompting claims that the government is not doing enough to combat neo-Nazi violence.
In February 2020, a far-right extremist killed ten people and injured five others in the central German city of Hanau.
On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur in 2019, a neo-Nazi attempted to attack a synagogue in Halle, killing two people.
Info source – The National News