At least eight people were killed, including the suspected gunman, in a shooting at a Jehovah's Witness center in the German city of Hamburg, police said Friday.

Several more people were wounded in the attack as Jehovah's Witness members were attending a religious service. The motive for the attack remained unclear.

"Eight people were fatally injured, apparently including the suspected perpetrator," Hamburg police said, adding that several other people were hurt, "some seriously".

German media put the number of wounded people at eight.

News weekly Der Spiegel reported that the suspected attacker was a former member of the Jehovah's Witness community.

The magazine, which did not cite its sources, said he had been armed with a handgun.

Leading newspaper Bild named the suspect as 35-year-old "Philipp F." and said he killed himself after police stormed the building.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the "brutal act of violence" and said his thoughts were with the victims and their loved ones.

'Filmed the whole thing'

The Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany association said it was "deeply saddened by the horrific attack on its members."

Hamburg police are due to give an update at a press conference around midday and urged people not to speculate about the motive behind the shooting.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said investigators were "working flat-out to determine the background" to the attack.

The first emergency calls were made around 9:15 p.m. (8:15 p.m. GMT) Thursday after shots rang out at the building in the city's northern district of Gross Borstel.

An alarm for "extreme danger" in the area was sounded using a catastrophe warning app, but Germany's Federal Office for Civil Protection lifted it shortly after 3 a.m. Friday.

Neighbors in the area recalled hearing multiple shots fired late Thursday.

"Our son filmed the whole thing, he could see quite well from the house," Bernd Mibache, a 66-year-old business owner, told AFP.

"On the video, you can see that someone broke a window, you can hear shots fired and see that someone broke in."

'Something big'

Police have asked witnesses to come forward and upload any pictures or videos they may have to a special website.

Another resident said police arrived on the scene within "four or five minutes."

"We heard shots and we knew something big was happening," said the woman, who gave only her first name Anetta.

She said she knew the building was used by members of the Jehovah's Witness community, describing them as "very peaceful, quiet."

The three-story building was still cordoned off on Friday with several officers standing outside, an AFP reporter said.

Germany has about 175,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, including 3,800 in Hamburg. The U.S. Christian movement, set up in the late 19th century and which preaches nonviolence, is known for door-to-door evangelism.

The first officers to enter the Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall building found several lifeless bodies and seriously wounded people, police said.

Hit by attacks

Germany has been rocked by several terrorist attacks in recent years.

Among the deadliest was a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 12 people.

The Tunisian attacker, a failed asylum seeker, was a supporter of the Daesh terrorist group.

Europe's most populous nation remains a target for Daesh-like terrorist groups because of its participation in the anti-Daesh coalition in Iraq and Syria.

Between 2013 and 2021, the number of terrorists considered dangerous in the country had multiplied by five to 615, according to interior ministry data.

But Germany has also been hit by several far-right assaults in recent years, sparking accusations that the government was not doing enough to stamp out neo-Nazi violence.

In February 2020, a far-right extremist shot dead 10 people and wounded five others in the central German city of Hanau.

And in 2019, two people were killed after a neo-Nazi tried to storm a synagogue in Halle on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.