<br /><br />A shooting at a Jehovah’s Witness hall in Hamburg on Thursday night left seven people dead, with others seriously wounded, Hamburg police said.<br /><br />The shooting happened at a building on Deelböge Street in the Groß Borstel district, police said. The district is a residential area in northern Hamburg.<br /><br />Law enforcement additionally believe they found the body of the alleged gunman onsite. They earlier said that they did not yet have reliable information on the motive behind the shooting.<br /><br />After arriving at the crime scene, police heard a gunshot from within the Jehovah’s Witness building and found a body when they followed the sound, Hamburg police spokesman Holger Vehren said in an on-camera interview from the scene. The police found several people dead and others injured by bullets when they arrived at the building around 9:15 p.m. local time, he added.<br /><br />Vehren said late Thursday that police teams were conducting a crime scene analysis and gathering information about the victims.<br /><br />The city’s emergency services were working “flat out to track down” whoever was responsible for the shooting and look for a motive, according to a translation of Hamburg Mayor Peter Tschentscher’s statement on Twitter.<br /><br />Images from the scene taken by local photographers showed a large number of heavily armed police clad in body armor, holding long guns and organizing themselves outside a three-story building.<br /><br />Ambulances could be seen arriving at the modern-looking structure, as well, photos show.<br /><br />People who were in or near the building at the time of the shooting were pictured being escorted away on foot by emergency workers<br /><br />Tschentscher, the Hamburg mayor, said the reports coming out of Groß Borstel “are shocking,” and offered his “deepest condolences to the families of the victims.”<br /><br />Other photos showed a member of a bomb disposal squad inside the building, along with police officers in tactical gear.<br /><br />“The dead all have gunshot wounds,” a police spokesman told Northern German Broadcasting, the local public radio and television broadcaster.<br /><br />Jehovah’s Witnesses are members of a Christian-based faith group that claims 8.6 million adherents in its congregations, known as Kingdom Halls, across more than 150 countries. The religious group was founded in the United States.<br /><br />A gunman killed six people Thursday night at a Jehovah's Witnesses hall in the German city of Hamburg before apparently turning his gun on himself. The shooter was identified as a former member of the congregation, police said Friday. Four men, one woman and an unborn child were killed. Police initially said Friday that a pregnant woman had died in the attack, but they later confirmed she was among eight people wounded. Her 7-month-old fetus died. <br /><br /><br />Police identified the gunman on Friday as unmarried former church member Phillip F., and said there was no indication of a terrorist motive. They said he left the church community about 18 months ago, "but apparently not on good terms."<br /><br />
