By Riham Alkousaa
HAMBURG (Reuters) – A gunman in Germany shot dead seven people including an unborn child before killing himself at a Jehovah’s Witness worship hall in the city of Hamburg, police and prosecutors said on Friday.
The 35-year-old, a German citizen and former Jehovah’s Witness, used a semi-automatic pistol he had legally owned since December in the shooting on Thursday evening, a Hamburg state prosecutor said at a joint news conference with police.
The victims included four men and two women, and an unborn female child, the prosecutor said.
Hamburg police said the mother survived.
Officials said the motive remained unknown, but a political reason had been ruled out. Police who raided his flat after the shooting found 15 loaded magazines of ammunition.
The officials said about 50 people were at an event held in the Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall in the Alsterdorf district of the city when the shooting started.
When police arrived, the shooter ran to the floor above and shot himself, the officials said, praising police for a quick response they said possibly avoided more deaths.
The building, a nondescript block in a residential area, has been used by the group as a place of worship for several years, resident Annelore Peemueller told Reuters.
Phone footage from another resident showed a person outside the building shooting in through a window. “I heard loud gunshots,” said the witness, who declined to give his name. “I saw a man shooting at a window with a firearm.”
HISTORY OF SHOOTINGS
Television footage showed dozens of police cars as well as fire engines blocking off streets and some people, wrapped in blankets, being led by emergency service workers onto a bus.
“There were 12 continuous shots,” another unidentified witness told reporters. “Then we saw how people were taken away in black bags.”
Germany has been shaken by a number of shootings in the last few years. In February 2020, a gunman with suspected far-right links shot dead nine people, including migrants from Turkey, in the western town of Hanau before killing himself and his mother.
In October 2019, a gunman killed two people when he opened fire outside a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.
The mayor of Hamburg expressed shock.
“I extend my deepest sympathy to the families of the victims. The forces are working at full speed to pursue the perpetrators and clarify the background,” Peter Tschentscher said on Twitter.
(Reporting by Madeline Chambers, Sabine Wollrab, Emma-Victoria Farr, Reuters Television; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Frances Kerry and Andrew Cawthorne)
