German authorities have said the gunman who attacked a Jehovah’s Witnesses centre killed himself after the police stormed the building on Friday, adding that a pregnant woman also lost her unborn child taking the death toll to eight.

The attacker escaped to the first floor of the building after police burst in and shot himself dead, said regional interior minister Andy Grote.

Grote added that the swift deployment of the police officers to the scene was a profitable intervention to “saved many lives”, according to AFP.

The report showed that the shooting also left eight people sustaining various degrees of wounds.

The first emergency calls were made around 2015 GMT after shots rang out at the building in the city’s northern district of Gross Borstel, a police spokesman at the scene said.

Police tweeted that “several people were seriously injured, some even fatally” in the incident.

“At the moment there is no reliable information on the motive of the crime,” police said, urging people not to speculate.

However, police have now said that there was “no indication of terrorist motive” in the Hamburg shooting.