“We are on site with a large operation,” the Hamburg police said in a statement. “So far, there is no reliable information on the motive for the crime.”
There are no indications that a perpetrator is on the run, Hamburg police spokesman Holger Vehren said in an on-camera interview from the scene. The perpetrator may be among the dead, he added.
Police found the body of a man who could be the shooter inside the building but were still conducting searches. Police did not disclose the number of victims who were wounded or killed in the attack.
After arriving at the crime scene, police heard a gunshot from within the Jehovah’s Witness building and found a body when they followed the sound, Vehren said. The police found several people dead and others injured with bullets when they arrived at the building around 9:15 p.m. local time, he added.
Vehren said that police teams were conducting a crime scene analysis and gathering information about the victims.
The city’s emergency services are working “flat out to track down” whoever was responsible for the shooting and look for a motive, according to a translation of Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher’s statement on Twitter.
Images from the scene taken by local photographers showed a large number of heavily armed police clad in body armor, holding long guns and organizing themselves outside a three-story building.
Ambulances could be seen arriving at the modern-looking structure, as well, photos show.
People who were in or near the building at the time of the shooting were pictured being escorted away on foot by emergency workers.
Tschentscher, the Hamburg mayor, said the reports coming out of Groß Borstel “are shocking,” and offered his “deepest condolences to the families of the victims.”
Other photos showed a member of a bomb disposal squad inside the building, along with police officers in tactical gear.
“The dead all have gunshot wounds,” a police spokesman told Northern German Broadcasting, the local public radio and television broadcaster.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are members of a Christian-based faith group that claims 8.6 million adherents in its congregations, known as Kingdom Halls, across 239 countries. The religious group was founded in the United States.
This story will be updated.
