Eight dead in Jehovah’s Witnesses shooting in Germany

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Responders outside the Jehovah's Witness building in Hamburg, Germany, on Friday. Associated Press/Photo by Markus Schreiber

Eight dead in Jehovah’s Witnesses shooting in Germany

Responding police officers heard a final gunshot as they arrived at a three-story Jehovah’s Witnesses building in the northern city of Hamburg on Thursday night. The shooter is among the dead, authorities said. The officers did not open fire, police spokesman Holger Vehren said. Several other victims in the building sustained injuries.

What caused the shooting? As of Friday morning, authorities in Germany’s second-largest city had not identified the shooter or a motive for the shooting. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a former Hamburg mayor, condemned the shooting as “a brutal act of violence.”

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read Jamie Dean’s report on how Russia silences Jehovah’s Witnesses and other religious minorities.

Onize Ohikere

Onize is WORLD’s Africa reporter and deputy global desk chief. She is a World Journalism Institute graduate and earned a journalism degree from Minnesota State University–Moorhead. Onize resides in Abuja, Nigeria.

@onize_ohiks