The results are now known.

German police reported Friday, March 10 eight dead in the shooting that occurred the day before targeting an office of Jehovah's Witnesses, including "obviously" the probable perpetrator of the killing, who according to the press is a former member of this community.

The latter "shot on the participants in a demonstration" of prayers organized Thursday evening by the community in its center of Hamburg, in the north of the country, said the police.

Other people were injured, "some of them seriously", she added, referring for more details to a press conference scheduled for midday.

Several German media speak of eight seriously injured.

"The Horrifying Attack"

According to the magazine Der Spiegel, the alleged perpetrator of the shots is a former member of Jehovah's Witnesses, aged about 30, and he was armed with a pistol.

He forced his way into the building where the prayer session was being held, which was attended by about 50 people, according to Spiegel.

Jehovah's Witnesses said in a statement "shocked" by the "horrific attack" against some of their members, which occurred "after a religious service".

The police have indicated that they favor the trail of a single shooter.

They "were called at around 9:05 p.m. (2015 GMT) to reports of shots being fired" at the three-story building used by the community in the Gross Borstel neighborhood, a police spokesman said. .

The intervention forces "entered the building very quickly and found dead and seriously injured people there", according to this spokesperson.

The Bild daily spoke of a "bloodbath" inside the premises.

"A brutal act of violence"

Inside, officers also heard a gunshot "coming from the top of the building" and found another person, the spokesperson continued.

It was obviously the shooter.

“There were about four distinct shooting phases,” testified a neighbor, Lara Bauch, in the daily Bild.

“During each of them we heard several shots fired, spaced from 20 seconds to a minute each,” she said.

“I continued to look at the window and saw at the Jehovah's Witnesses a person running at full speed from the ground floor to the first floor”, indicated this witness.

Local authorities issued an alert on Thursday evening to dissuade residents from leaving their homes.

She was lifted overnight.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sent his "thoughts" to the victims of the shooting and their loved ones on Friday, deploring in a tweet "a brutal act of violence".

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser also reacted on Twitter saying she was "shattered by the terrible act of violence perpetrated in a community of Jehovah's Witnesses in Hamburg".

Heirs to early Christianity

Founded in the 19th century in the United States, Jehovah's Witnesses consider themselves the heirs of primitive Christianity and constantly and only refer to the Bible.

The status of the organization varies from country to country: they are legally considered the same as the "big" religions in Austria and Germany, which has just over 170,000 members of this faith. , including 3,800 in Hamburg, according to the Witnesses website.

The seat of the community in Germany is in Berlin.

In France, many of their local branches have the status of "cult association", and this rigorous movement is regularly accused of sectarian aberrations.

With AFP

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