The alleged perpetrator of the shooting at a center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Hamburg, northern Germany, which killed seven people, committed suicide after the arrival of the police, local authorities announced this Friday, who ruled out the possibility of terrorism.
“The shooter fled to the first floor [do edifício onde os membros da comunidade estavam reunidos numa sessão de oração] and committed suicide,” said the Minister of the Interior of the city of Hamburg, Andy Grote, adding that among the victims was a woman who was seven months pregnant.
The police added, on the other hand, that the presumed author of the shots is a former member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, an organization with which he had apparently entered into conflict.
“But there are no indications of a terrorist context,” a representative of the German public prosecutor told a press conference.
The police indicated that they were alerted to the shooting at 9:15 pm on Thursday (8:15 pm in Lisbon) and that, after arriving at the scene, they heard a shot on an upper floor of the building.
A police spokesman told journalists that there were “evidence that the author of the attack” could be in the building, “possibly even among the dead”.
The intervention forces “entered the building very quickly and found dead and seriously injured people there”, explained the spokesman, who did not advance possible motives for the shooting.
According to the Bild daily, the shooting generated “a bloodbath” and resulted in at least seven dead and eight seriously injured.
The German news agency DPA indicated that rescue teams removed 18 people, who escaped unharmed, from a building used by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Hamburg city authorities said the shooting took place in the Gross Borstel district of northern Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city, at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a modern three-story building.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has already lamented the “brutal act of violence”, stressing that his thoughts are with the victims and their families.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser also reacted on Twitter, saying she was “shocked by the terrible act of violence”.-
The community of Jehovah’s Witnesses also said it was “deeply saddened” by the attack.
“The religious community is deeply saddened by the terrible death of its members […] in Hamburg,” he said in a statement published on the website.
The mayor of Hamburg, Peter Tschentscher, expressed solidarity with the victims after the news, which he considered shocking, in a message on Twitter.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are part of an international church, founded in the United States in the 19th century and headquartered in Warwick, New York, claiming a worldwide membership of about 8.7 million people, with about 170,000 in Germany.
German authorities have been on high alert in recent years in the face of a dual terrorist threat, from Islamic and right-wing extremism.
Germany has been the victim of attacks by Islamic extremist movements, in particular one with a truck, claimed by the Islamic State group (IS) that caused 12 deaths in December 2016, in Berlin, the deadliest of its kind committed on German soil.
Germans continue to be a target for Islamic extremist groups, in particular because of the country’s involvement in the coalition against IS in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
Since 2013 and until the end of 2021, the number of Muslims considered dangerous in Germany quintupled, reaching 615, indicated the German Interior Ministry.
After an alert from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), German authorities announced on January 8 the arrest of two Iranians suspected of preparing a chemical attack, using ricin and cyanide.
Another threat is the far right, after several deadly attacks in recent years against religious communities or sites in the country.
In the racist attack in Hanau, near Frankfurt (west), in February 2020, a German involved in a conspiracy movement killed nine young people, all of foreign origin.
Between 2000 and 2007, a neo-Nazi group called NSU had already murdered nine migrants and a police officer. Two of the members committed suicide before being arrested and the third was sentenced to life in prison.
