German authorities respond to shooting inside Jehovah’s Witness hall that killed multiple people

A gunman opened fire in a Jehovah’s Witness hall in Hamburg, Germany Thursday evening, killing several people and wounding others, police. 

The shooting happened around 9 p.m. The exact number of dead and the number of injured remained unclear. 

Armed police officers near the scene of a shooting in Hamburg, Germany on Thursday March 9, 2023, after one or more people opened fire in a church.  (Jonas Walzberg/dpa via AP)

“We only know that several people died here; several people are wounded, they were taken to hospitals,” police spokesman Holger Vehren said of the shooting in the Gross Borstel district of Germany’s second-biggest city. 

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He said he had no information on the severity of the injuries suffered by the wounded. Police did not confirm German media reports, which named no sources, of six or seven dead.

It reported seeing rescue services taking people out of a building used by Jehovah’s Witnesses. 

Police officers in special equipment walk through a Jehovah’s Witness building in Hamburg, Germany, Thursday, March 9, 2023.  (Jonas Walzberg/dpa via AP)

Vehren said after officers arrived they heard a shot from an upper floor and found a person dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound who may have been the shooter. 

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Police said in the early hours Friday that they were still working to verify that no further perpetrators were involved.

Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher tweeted that the news was “shocking” and offered his sympathy to the victims’ relatives.

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Further details on what happened weren’t immediately available.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.