The investigation is progressing but the mystery is still whole about the motive for this shooting in a center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Hamburg. In total, eight people were killed, including “obviously” the probable author of the shots, the police said on Friday March 11 in a first official quantified report. Several German media speak of eight seriously injured.
What happened ?
The facts took place during a prayer service organized by the community in this religious center in Hamburg. He forced his way into the building where the prayer session was being held, which was attended by around 50 people, according to the Spiegel. The man then “shot at the participants”, said the police, adding that other people were injured, “some of them seriously”. The daily Picture spoke of a “bloodbath” inside the premises.
The police “were called around 9:15 p.m. (8:15 p.m. GMT) for shots fired” in this three-storey building, located in the Gross Borstel district, said a police spokesman. The intervention forces “entered the building very quickly and found dead and seriously injured people there”, according to this spokesman.
Inside, officers also heard a gunshot “coming from the top of the building” and found another person, the spokesperson continued. It was obviously the shooter. “There were about four distinct shooting phases,” testified a neighbor, Lara Bauch, in the daily Bild. “During each of them we heard several shots fired, spaced from 20 seconds to a minute each,” she said.
Who is the shooter?
According to the magazine Der Spiegel, the alleged shooter is a former member of Jehovah’s Witnesses, in his thirties, and he was armed with a pistol. Information not confirmed by the authorities. The police, however, indicated that they favored the trail of a single shooter.
Several people were killed in a shooting at a church in Hamburg in northern Germany on March 9, 2023
© / afp.com/Jonas Walzberg
What reactions?
Jehovah’s Witnesses said in a statement “shocked” by the “horrific attack” against some of their members, which occurred “after a religious service”.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sent his “thoughts” to the victims of the shooting and their loved ones on Friday, deploring in a tweet “a brutal act of violence”. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser also reacted on Twitter saying she was “shattered by the terrible act of violence perpetrated in a community of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Hamburg”.