A shooting broke out on Thursday evening in a church in Hamburg, Germany’s second largest city. Several people were killed and others seriously injured, police said. Shots” were fired at a church in Hamburg’s Gross Borstel district, and “several” people were killed and others seriously injured, according to a tweet from the police in the northern German metropolis “A large number of law enforcement agencies are on site,” Hamburg police added on Twitter.
“A major police intervention is currently taking place in Alsterdorf”, a district in the north of the city, simply confirmed on Twitter the police of Hamburg (north-west). “According to initial findings, a shot was fired in a church,” police said. “Several people were seriously injured, some even fatally.”
The perpetrator of the shooting could be among those who died, police in the northern German port city said. There are “indications that a perpetrator may be in the building, possibly even among the dead,” a police spokesman told NTV television.
“Bain de sang”
According to German media, the shooting would have left seven people dead and several injured, some of them seriously. The daily Bild evokes a “bloodbath” and affirms that the facts took place “in a church of Jehovah’s Witnesses”.
According to several media, the population of the port city was warned of an “extreme danger” via the disaster alert application, the police calling to avoid the area concerned. “Take shelter immediately in a building”, adds the message asking to “telephone only in case of extreme emergency, so as not to overload the lines”.
“Around 9 p.m., one or more unknown persons shot at people in a church,” said the Federal Office for Civil Protection. “Avoid the Danger Zone. In the Danger Zone, stay where you are and do not go outside at this time,” the Agency said in a statement.
The police regard the shooting as an isolated act, reports the German press agency dpa.
The German authorities have remained on the alert in recent years in the face of a double terrorist threat, jihadism and right-wing extremism. Germany remains a target for jihadist groups, in particular because of its involvement in the coalition fighting the IS group in Iraq and Syria and in the one that was deployed in Afghanistan after 2001.
Since 2013 and until the end of 2021, the number of Islamists considered dangerous in Germany has increased fivefold to currently stand at 615, according to the Interior Ministry. That of the Salafists is estimated at around 11,000, twice as many as in 2013.
After a warning from the FBI, the German authorities announced on January 8 the arrest of two Iranians suspected of having wanted to commit an “Islamist” chemical attack using ricin and cyanide.
Another threat hangs over Germany, embodied by the far right, after several deadly attacks in recent years targeting community or religious places.
In the racist attack in Hanau, near Frankfurt (west), perpetrated in February 2020, a German involved in the conspiracy movement had 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 policewoman. Two of its members committed suicide before their arrest and the third, a woman, was sentenced to life imprisonment.