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Shooting kills 8 including a pregnant woman at a Jehovah’s Witness center in Germany, shooter committed suicide
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Steph Deschamps / March 11, 2023
Several people were killed and others seriously injured in a shooting Thursday night at a Jehovah’s Witness center in Hamburg, police said.
The shooting at a Jehovah’s Witnesses center in Hamburg in northern Germany on Thursday night left eight people dead, police said Friday in a first official count.
The latter “shot at participants in a demonstration” organized by the community, said the police, adding that other people were injured, “some of them seriously.
The alleged perpetrator of the shooting at a Jehovah’s Witnesses center in Hamburg killed himself when police arrived, after shooting seven people on Thursday, local authorities announced Friday. “The perpetrator fled to the second floor” of the building where members of the community were gathered for a prayer session”, “and killed himself”, said the Minister of the Interior of the city-state of Hamburg Andy Grote, pointing out that among the victims was a woman seven months pregnant.
According to Der Spiegel magazine, the alleged shooter is a former member of Jehovah’s Witnesses, aged about 30, and was armed with a pistol.
The events took place during a prayer service organized by the community in its Hamburg center.
Police announced overnight on Twitter that they had discovered a body “in a parish house in Gross Borstel and we believe it may be a perpetrator” of the shootings. “At this point, we assume there was only one shooter,” they said.
A large number of law enforcement agencies are” at the site of the Jehovah’s Witness center, Hamburg police added on Twitter.
The Federal Office of Civil Protection lifted the official danger alert in case of an attack in the night, shortly after 03:00local time, to discourage people from leaving their homes.
Jehovah’s Witnesses were gathered since 7 p.m. for a weekly Bible study meeting, according to the daily Hamburger Abendblatt.
Law enforcement “were called around 9:15 p.m. to report shots fired in the three-story building” in the Gross Borstel neighborhood in the north of Germany’s second-largest city, a police spokesman reported on NTV.
The intervention forces “entered the building very quickly and found dead and seriously injured,” according to this spokesman.
Inside, officers also heard a gunshot “coming from the upper part of the building” and found another person, the spokesman continued, stressing “can’t give any indication yet” of the motive.
In the evening, there was a Jehovah’s Witness demonstration in the building,” he added.
The news from Alsterdorf/Gross Borstel is shocking,” reacted the city’s mayor, Social Democrat Peter Tschentscher, on Twitter. “The intervention forces are working hard to pursue the perpetrators and to elucidate the background. »
Founded in the 19th century in the United States, Jehovah’s Witnesses consider themselves to be the heirs of primitive Christianity and refer constantly and solely to the Bible.
The status of the organization varies from country to country: they are considered on the same level as “major” religions in Austria and Germany, which has about 175,000 members, including 3,800 in Hamburg, according to the Witnesses’ website.
In France, many of their local branches have the status of “religious association”, and this rigorous movement is regularly accused of sectarian aberrations.
While the motive for the shooting remains unknown at this stage, German authorities have been on the alert in recent years for a double terrorist threat, jihadism and right-wing extremism.
Germany has been the victim of jihadist attacks, most notably a ram-truck attack claimed by the Islamic State group that killed 12 people in December 2016 in Berlin. This jihadist attack was the deadliest ever committed on German soil.
Since 2013 and until the end of 2021, the number of Islamists considered dangerous in Germany has increased fivefold to 615, according to the Interior Ministry. The number of Salafists is estimated at around 11,000, twice as many as in 2013.
Another threat to Germany comes from the far right, after several deadly attacks in recent years on community or religious sites.
In the racist attack in Hanau, near Frankfurt (west), perpetrated in February 2020, a German involved in the conspiracy movement had shot dead nine young people, all of foreign origin. In 2019, an extremist had attempted to commit carnage in a synagogue in Halle on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. He was unable to enter the place of worship but killed two passers-by before being arrested.
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Sylvie Claire / July 21, 2024
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on the phone on Friday, with the former US president claiming to have promised the Ukrainian president to “end the war” between Ukraine and Russia should he return to the White House. “As your next president of the United States, I will bring peace to the world and end the war that has cost so many lives,” said the Republican presidential candidate.
Donald Trump frequently claims that he would be able to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine very quickly on his return to power, but never provides details of how he would achieve this. Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the phone call, during which he congratulated the billionaire on his official nomination the previous day as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate.
Donald Trump’s frequent praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as his criticism of other Nato countries, is causing concern among Ukraine’s Western allies. In February, he threatened that, if he returned to the White House, he would no longer guarantee the protection of Atlantic Alliance countries against Russia if they did not pay their share, even claiming that he would “encourage” Moscow to attack them. The former American president also used his power over the Republicans to block a $61 billion military aid package for Kiev for months in Congress, which was finally adopted at the end of April.
In his posting on X on Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky said he had “agreed with President Trump to discuss, in a face-to-face meeting, the steps to be taken towards a just and lasting peace” in Ukraine.
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Former Ukrainian far-right MP murdered in Lviv: “All leads are being investigated, including Russia”
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Steph Deschamps / July 21, 2024
In a message on Telegram, the Ukrainian National Police said she had succumbed to her injuries in hospital after being the target of an assassination attempt.
“I always say that no place is safe in Ukraine,” lamented Lviv mayor Andriï Sadovy, denouncing a ‘heinous murder’ and offering his condolences to the victim’s relatives.
According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office, the attack took place on Friday evening, at around 7.30pm, when an unidentified individual fired at Irina Farion, seriously wounding her in the head. “All surveillance cameras are being checked, witnesses are being interviewed and several districts (of Lviv) are being examined. All leads are being investigated, including the one leading to Russia”, reacted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X on Saturday.
Interior Minister Igor Klimenko told a briefing in Lviv on Friday evening that the suspected killer could have been lurking around Irina Farion’s home for several days.
According to him, investigators are currently focusing on the possibility of a murder motivated by a “personal grudge” linked to the victim’s activities, but are not ruling out a “commissioned assassination” either.
The 60-year-old language teacher and linguist was a member of parliament for the nationalist Svoboda party between 2012 and 2014.
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Sylvie Claire / July 18, 2024
At least six people died in a shopping mall fire on Wednesday in Zigong, southwest China, and thirty others were rescued, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said. “Rescue teams are continuing their search,” the media outlet added.
Images broadcast by the channel and others shared on social networks show thick black smoke rising from a building overlooking a shopping street in this city 1,600 kilometers from the capital Beijing, in the southwestern province of Sichuan.
The fire broke out in the early evening in a shopping mall at the foot of a 14-storey building, CCTV reported.
“At 8:20 pm, the fire was extinguished and 17 people were rescued. Others are still trapped, and rescue operations are continuing”, said the station in an initial report on the situation.
Fires and other fatal accidents are frequent in China, due to the sometimes lax application of safety standards. In January, at least 39 people perished in a store fire in central China. According to the authorities, the fire started in the basement of a store when workers “broke the rules” during construction work. At the time, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for lessons to be learned from the disaster to prevent further tragedies. The same month, a fire in a residential building claimed at least 15 lives.
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