German police announced on Friday evening that “several” people are being held hostage in a pharmacy in the city of Karlsruhe (southwest Germany), but there is no danger to the general public, Reuters reports.

The incident in GermanyPhoto: Christoph Schmidt / AFP / Profimedia

In a press release issued by the Prosecutor’s Office, the police said that the hostages were not injured.

The incident came a day after a bloody attack on a community center of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Hamburg shocked the whole of Germany, a country where gun violence is relatively rare.

A large number of police were mobilized to the scene starting at 4:30 p.m. local time (5:30 p.m. in Romania), the spokesman said, but for tactical reasons declined to say how many people were taken hostage or how many law enforcement officers were involved.