At least seven people have been killed and several more injured after a shooting in the northern German city of Hamburg, German media have reported, citing police and emergency services. Police said the gunman was believed to be among the dead. “We have no indications of a perpetrator on the run,” a spokesman said soon after the attack. Later, police said that they had found a “lifeless person…who we believe could be a perpetrator”. Investigations were ongoing to rule out the involvement of further perpetrators, police said. Hamburg police tweeted earlier on Thursday evening that a major police operation was underway in the GrossBorstel district of the city, adding that they were urgently investigating the background, but gave no further details. “According to initial findings, shots were fired in a church on Deelbögestrasse in the GrossBorstel district,” police said. “Several people were seriously injured, some fatally. We are on site with a large contingent of officers.” Bild newspaper said seven people had died and 25 were injured – eight of them seriously – in the shooting, which it said happened in a Jehovah’s Witness centre soon after 9pm. Police from a special unit were by chance already near the scene when the shooting happened, local media reported. “Police officers happened to be near the crime scene because they were on their way back to their accommodation at the police headquarters in Alsterdorf,” Welt reported. NDR reporter Heiko Sander told Tagesschau that the police were close by when they heard several shots being fired. Police entered the building and started evacuating people, including a woman who was pregnant, Sander said. A police spokesman said several streets had been sealed off and the public warned by text message to avoid the area. Local residents were told to stay indoors and only to use their phones “in extreme emergency” so as not to overburden the network. “So far, there is no reliable information on the motive of the crime,” the police spokesman said. “We ask that you do not share unwarranted assumptions and/or spread rumours.” The mayor of Hamburg, Peter Tschentscher, said: “I extend my deepest sympathy to the families of the victims. Police are working at full speed to pursue the perpetrators and clarify the background.” Germany has been rocked by several mass shootings in recent years. 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.