Several people were killed in a shooting at a Jehovah's Witness church in the northern German city of Hamburg on Thursday, with the motive for the attack unclear, police said, Reuters reports.
A perpetrator may be among the dead, police said. Several people were seriously injured, police said, declining to say how many died.
The Bild newspaper reported that seven people were dead and eight others injured in the shooting at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witness in a northern district of Hamburg.
Police received a call soon after 9 p.m. (2000 GMT), a spokesperson said. Officers quickly arrived at the scene to find several people seriously injured and some dead.
"Then they heard a shot from above, they went upstairs and found one further person," said the police spokesperson.
TV footage showed armed police storming the building and escorting people out with their hands above their heads.
Hamburg police tweeted that they believed a dead person they had found could be a perpetrator. "In order to rule out the involvement of further perpetrators, we are conducting comprehensive checks and searches," they said.
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.
