Shooting at Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany leaves several dead, several injured

BERLIN - Shots were fired inside a building used by Jehovah's Witnesses in the northern German city of Hamburg on Thursday night, and an unspecified number of people were killed or wounded, police said.

The shooting took place in the Gross Borstel district, a few kilometres north of the downtown area of Germany's second-biggest city.

On Twitter, police said that several people were seriously wounded, some of them fatally, but didn't give a precise figure.

At least six people are dead and several more injured, according to local media outlet Focus Online.

Rescue services took people out of a building used by Jehovah's Witnesses, according to the German news agency dpa.

The police said they were alerted to the shooting about 9.15 pm and were at the scene quickly. After officers arrived, they heard a shot from an upper floor.

The police statement said there was no immediate indication that a shooter was on the run and that it appeared to be that the perpetrator or perpetrators were either in the building or among the dead.

The police said there was no information on the event that was under way in the building when the shooting took place. They had no immediate information on a possible motive.