A man has killed seven people and left eight injured in a shooting at a Jehovah’s Witness church in the German town of Hamburg, as reported by the city police investigating the attack. The alleged perpetrator of the shots is a former member of that religious community, who committed suicide after the attack.
The rapid action of the police has prevented more victims, according to what investigators later pointed out at a press conference. The attacker fired nine magazines of ammunition and for the crime used the pistol that was registered in his name, since he had a weapons permit as a sports shooter.
The seven fatalities in the attack are four men and two women, between the ages of 33 and 60 and all of them German nationals, as well as a seven-month-old unborn child. None of them were relatives of the attacker.
Eight people were injured and four of them remain in serious condition for the moment, six of whom have German nationality, in addition to including a Ugandan and a Ukrainian woman.
A religious ceremony was held
The security forces received reports of a shooting after 9:00 p.m. local time, when some fifty Jehovah’s Witnesses were gathered celebrating a religious service, one of the two that are held each week in that temple.
A police patrol that was in the vicinity of the church, from the Alsterdorf district, in the Groß Borstel neighborhood, south of the city airport, was the first to go to the scene. When the agents entered the building, which was used by Jehovah’s Witnesses, they immediately saw how an individual with a firearm fled to the upper floor, confirmed the director of the police operation, Mathias Tresp.
Next, they found “a lifeless man with a lethal wound and a firearm next to him ,” Tresp said, emphasizing how the rapid action of the police has managed to “isolate” the attacker from his victims and thus prevented that there would be more deaths. “The perpetrator fled to the first floor of the building and there he committed suicide, so we are talking about eight deaths in total,” said the Hamburg Interior Councilor, Andy Grote, at a press conference.
The representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office and the Criminal Investigation Office of the police have indicated that the attacker, identified as Philipp F., of German nationality, had no criminal record of any kind . Multiple boxes of ammunition have been found in his home and the police have confiscated electronic devices that are still being investigated.
Although the motivation for the attack is yet to be clarified, there are no indications that there is a political background, but rather that the authorities have pointed to a possible personal dispute, although they have not gone into details.
Police ask for public cooperation
There are still no indications about the causes of the attack, according to the police, who have set up a web page where you can upload photos and videos of what happened “about the relevant events” related to the event to help in the investigation.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said this Friday that his “thoughts” are with the victims of the shooting and their families, and he deplored the events in a tweet in which he described them as “a brutal act of violence.” The Interior Minister, Nancy Faeser, has also reacted on Twitter, assuring that she was “destroyed by the terrible act of violence perpetrated ” in the center of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The European Commission has condemned the “despicable” shooting in Hamburg and has expressed its condolences to the victims and their families. “The attacks are always despicable, but the attacks on places of worship, which by definition are places of peace, are really shocking,” said the European Commissioner for the Interior, Ylva Johansson, who described it as a “brutal act of violence “.
The mayor of Hamburg, Peter Tschentscher, was the first to express his condolences after learning of the attack. “My deepest condolences to the families of the victims. The emergency services are working at full speed to locate the perpetrators and clarify the facts,” the councilor tweeted.