A gunman burst into an American synagogue during a circumcision ceremony, shooting dead 11 people.
Robert Bowers 46, wielding an arsenal that included a semi-automatic rifle and handguns, yelled "All Jews must die" during the attack.
The shooting happened at the Tree of Life Congregation in a leafy suburb of Pittsburgh, in the heart of its Jewish community.
About 100 people we in the synagogue at the time. It was not known if the baby being circumcised, during a ceremony known as a bris, was harmed.
Bowers had left a trail of vile white supremacist comments and anti-Semitic abuse on social media, including sharing posts denying the Holocaust.
An hour before the attack he wrote on the Gab social media forum that Jewish "invaders" were "killing our people".
He wrote: "I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Police officers describing the scene over a scanner said the gunman gave himself up after being injured. “All these Jews have to die,” he said again as he crawled towards them.
President Donald Trump was quick to insist that tougher gun laws would have made little difference but the latest attack will also fuel fears that religious and race hate is on the rise during a fraught period of divisive politics.
Stephen Weiss, who was in a service at the synagogue at the time, described how members of the congregation fled and hid in the basement.
“It sounded like a loud crash in the hallway,” he said, describing rapid gunfire that sounded like an automatic weapon.
Source: The Telegraph
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