Several dead in shooting at Jehovah's Witness church in Germany

Several people have been killed and others were injured during a shooting in the German city of Hamburg, officials said on Thursday evening. According to several German media reports, at least seven people were killed in the shooting. What do we know so far? The shooting took place at the Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom Hall in the Gross Borstel district at around 9 p.m. local time (0800 UTC/GMT). "The dead all have gunshot wounds," a police spokesperson said, without confirming the exact number of victims. 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. Police said the background and potential motive behind the shooting which occurred during a Jehovah's Witnesses event, were unclear. Police spokesman Holger Vehren that after officers arrived and found people with apparent gunshot wounds on the ground floor, they heard a shot from an upper floor and found a fatally wounded person upstairs. That individual may have been the shooter, Vehren said, adding that there was no indication a shooter was on the run. He said it appeared likely that the perpetrator was either in the building or among the dead. Police did not need to use their firearms, Vehren said. "According to the current state of affairs, we assume that there is one perpetrator," Hamburg police later said on Twitter. Multiple gunshots heard Two onlookers told the German n-tv television channel that they heard 12 gunshots. A student who lives nearby told Germany's DPA news agency there were four periods of shooting. "There were always several shots in these periods, roughly at intervals of 20 seconds to a minute," the student said. The city-state's Interior Senator, Andy Grote, said special forces were deployed to secure the area. Residents living nearby were initially warned not to leave their homes amid the ongoing operation, but they were later told there was no longer a threat in the area. Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher called the incident "shocking." "I extend my deepest sympathy to the families of the victims," he wrote on Twitter. "The forces are working at full speed to pursue the perpetrators and clarify the background." ( Source DW)