Several shots were fired Wednesday near a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle, leaving two people dead as the suspected assailants fled, police said.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Wednesday that the shooting was anti-Semitic, adding that federal prosecutors who have taken on the investigation thought there were signs that it could be a right-wing extremist attack.
"Based on current information, we have to assume that it was at least an anti-Semitic attack. According to the federal prosecutors' office, there are enough indications that it was possibly a right-wing extremist motive. They have taken over the investigations," Seehofer said in a statement.
An assailant tried to force his way into the synagogue but did not get in as 70 to 80 people inside were observing Yom Kippur, Judaism's holiest day, a local Jewish leader said.
The gunman filmed himself during the attack and posted the footage online, the SITE monitoring group said.
"35-mins of head-mounted camera footage of #Halle #Germany shooting was posted on video game site," the group tweeted. In an excerpt of the footage seen by AFP, the suspected perpetrator launched into an anti-Semitic diatribe in English.
The video was livestreamed on Twitch and eventually seen by some 2,200 people, the online platform said.
"The account owner streamed this horrific act live on Twitch for 35 minutes, during which time it was viewed by approximately five people," the livestream gaming platform posted on Twitter.
"A recording of the stream, which was automatically generated based on the account's settings, was viewed by approximately 2,200 people in the 30 minutes before the video was flagged and removed from Twitch," the platform, which is owned by Amazon, said.
A video clip broadcast by regional public broadcaster MDR showed a man in a helmet and an olive-colored top getting out of a car and firing four shots from behind the vehicle from a long-barreled gun. It wasn't clear what he was shooting at.Pictures from the scene showed a body lying in the street behind a police cordon. News agency dpa reported the body was lying opposite a synagogue, about 30 meters (yards) away.
The head of Halle's Jewish community, Max Privorozki, told German news magazine Der Spiegel that a camera at the entrance of the synagogue showed a person trying to break into the building.
"The assailant shot several times at the door and also threw several Molotov cocktails, firecrackers or grenades to force his way in," he said. "But the door remained closed - God protected us. The whole thing lasted perhaps five to 10 minutes."
Privorozki said there were 70 or 80 people inside the synagogue when the shooting occurred.
A witness interviewed on n-tv television said he had been in a kebab shop when a man with a helmet and a military jacket threw something that looked like a grenade, which bounced off the doorframe. Conrad Roessler said the man then shot into the shop at least once.
"All the customers next to me ran, of course I did too — I think there were five or six of us in there," Roessler said. "The man behind me probably died."
"I hid in the toilet," he said. "The others looked for the back entrance. I didn't know if there was one. I locked myself quietly in this toilet, and wrote to my family that I love them, and waited for something to happen."
Police then came into the shop, he said.
Synagogues are often protected by police in Germany. Police in two other cities in eastern Germany, Dresden and Leipzig, stepped up security at synagogues there after the shooting in Halle.
"Shots being fired at a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the festival of reconciliation, hits us in the heart," German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Twitter. "We must all act against anti-Semitism in our country."
"All our country's citizens of Jewish faith can be sure that we are with them with our whole heart and we will give them all the security that is possible," Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz said.
The U.S. Embassy in Berlin issued a statement that said, "today's attack is an attack on all of us, and the perpetrators must be held accountable."
Police said shots were also fired Wednesday in Landsberg, about 15 kilometers (nearly 10 miles) from Halle but it wasn't clear whether the two shootings were related. Scores of police vans and a helicopter could be seen on the edge of the small town a few hours later.
The European Parliament held a moment of silence at the start of its session Wednesday to mark the unfolding situation in Halle.
