German shooting: 7 dead including one unborn child at Jehovah’s Witness meeting

Seven people, including an unborn baby, were killed after a gunman opened fire during a Jehovah’s Witnesses hall meeting in Hamburg, German reports said on Friday.

The gunman, identified only as Philipp F due to German secrecy laws, fired more than 100 rounds on Thursday night before taking his own life in what is believed to have been a lone attack.

According to the BBC, his motive has not been confirmed, although he was reported to be a former member of a religious group who harbored “malafides” towards the community.

Bodies are carried and loaded into mortuaries from the building of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Hamburg, Germany, Friday, March 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

German officials: shots fired inside the church, resulting in several deaths

Chancellor Olaf Scholz, former mayor of Hamburg, described the attack as a “brutal act of violence”.

Footage of Thursday’s attack has since emerged from a resident near the hall which shows the gunman firing through a window into the living room.

Two women and four men died during the attack, along with a seven-month-old unborn child. The BBC reported on Friday that the baby’s mother survived the attack with injuries to her womb.

Eight other people were injured in the attack, four of them seriously.

Armed police officers near the scene of a shootout after one or more people opened fire at a church in Hamburg, Germany, Thursday, March 9, 2023. The Hamburg city government said the shooting occurred in the Gross Borstel district. (Jonas Walzberg/dpa via AP)

German authorities react to shots fired inside Jehovah’s Witness hall, killing several

Emergency officials were called at 9:04 p.m. after gunshots were heard in Germany’s second largest city. By 9:09, a special operations unit had arrived on the scene.

Hamburg’s state interior minister Andi Grothe told reporters, “We can assume that he saved many lives.”

Hamburg police chief Ralf Martin Meyer said the guns were legally owned and that the gunman had an arms license.

Several people were killed and injured when shots were fired inside a building used by Jehovah’s Witnesses in the northern German city of Hamburg on Thursday evening, police said. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

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The mayor also said that the 35-year-old man was flagged for possibly being inappropriate for carrying a weapon, but that officers did not find that any rules were broken in removing said weapon.

After reaching the scene, the German officers did not need to fire a single shot.

It is unclear when exactly the gunman took his own life.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.