International Hamburg shooting: Seven killed in attack on Jehovah’s Witness hall

Seven people, including an unborn baby, have been killed in a shooting at a Jehovah’s Witness meeting hall in the German city of Hamburg, police say.

They say the gunman acted alone in Thursday’s attack, and later took his own life. His motives are unknown.

The suspect, named only as Philipp F, is said to have had “ill feelings” towards the religious community, of which he had previously been a member.

Video has emerged appearing to show him firing through a window of the hall.

At a briefing on Friday, the police said four men and two women were shot dead. All the dead were German nationals.

Eight people were injured, four seriously. A Ugandan and a Ukrainian were among those hurt.

A woman who was seven months pregnant was shotkilling her unborn baby. The mother survived.

The first emergency call came at 21:04 local time (20:04 GMT) on Thursday, to report that shots had been fired in the building on Deelböge street, Gross Borstel district, the police said.

Officers were on site four minutes later, and they were almost immediately joined by special forces. The officers had to break windows to enter the building where about 50 people had gathered.

The suspect - described as 35-year-old “sports shooter” who had a gun licence - had fled to the first floor. His “lifeless body” was found shortly afterwards.

He had managed to shoot nine magazines of ammunition, and 20 more were found in his backpack.

German Senator Andy Grote said “fast and decisive actions” by police officers had saved many lives. He also described the attack as the “worst crime” in Hamburg’s recent history.

Police confirmed that they had previously received an anonymous tip-off that raised concerns about the perpetrator’s mental health. Officers had visited him after the tip-off - but did not have enough grounds to take away his gun at the time.

Gregor Miesbach, who filmed the gunman shooting through a first-floor window, told the Bild newspaper: “I didn’t realise what was happening. I was filming with my phone, and only realised through the zoom that someone was shooting at Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“I heard loud gunshots... I saw a man with a firearm shooting through a window and filmed it,” he said.

Lara Bauch, a 23-year-old student who lives nearby, told the DPA news agency that “there were about four bursts of gunfire - several shots were fired in each burst - with gaps lasting roughly 20 seconds to a minute”.

She said that from her window she could see a person frantically running from the ground floor to the first floor. “The man was wearing dark clothing and moving fast,” she added.

An alert was sent on the federal warning app, NINAwarn, on Thursday evening telling locals that “one or more unknown perpetrators shot at people in a church”.

Local residents were told not to leave their homes amid the ongoing police operation. Footage showed police escorting people out of the meeting hall, some to ambulances.

A bomb disposal unit was also deployed

The reasons behind the shooting were “still completely unclear”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described it as a “brutal act of violence”, saying his thoughts were with the victims and their relatives.

In a statement, the Jehovah’s Witness community in Germany said it was “deeply saddened by the horrific attack on its members at the Kingdom Hall in Hamburg after a religious service”.

Forensic experts in white suits worked through the night inside the brightly lit interior of the meeting house.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are members of a Christian-based religious movement, founded in the US at the end of the 19th Century.

In its latest report from 2022, the movement says there are about 8.7 million Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide, including about 170,000 in Germany.

In the city of Hamburg, there are believed to be nearly 4,000 members of the organisation.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are probably best known for their door-to-door evangelical work; witnessing from house to house and offering Bible literature.

Although Christian-based, the group believes that the traditional Christian Churches have deviated from the true teachings of the Bible, and do not work in full harmony with God.

Germany has some of the strictest gun laws in Europe, including a clause that anyone aged under 25 must pass a psychological evaluation before getting a gun licence.

In 2021, there were around one million private gun owners in Germany, according to the National Firearms Registry. They account for 5.7 million legal firearms and firearm parts, most of them owned by hunters.

After mass arrests were made last December in relation to a suspected plot to overthrow the government, the German authorities are planning to tighten the country’s gun laws even further.

Sunak and Macron summit: UK to give £500m to help France curb small boat crossings

The UK will give France almost £500m over three years to help stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats.

The cash was announced at a summit in Paris between UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President Emmanuel Macron, who said France would also contribute.

The money will go towards an extra 500 officers and a new detention centre in France, but this will not be fully operational until the end of 2026.

The UK had planned to pay France around £63m this year to tackle the problem.

This new package appears to at least double that amount, with the UK pledging £120m in 2023-24.

France will also step up its funding of enforcement but has not said by how much.

Labour’s shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry accused the Conservatives of “lurching from one crisis to another with nothing more than their typical sticking plaster politics”.

“Before Rishi Sunak sends even more money to the French authorities to tackle this crisis, he needs to explain what was achieved by the hundreds of millions we’ve given them before, and why small boat crossings continued to go up regardless.”

Mr Macron praised the joint efforts of UK and French teams working to reduce small boat crossings.

Speaking at a press conference with Mr Sunak at the Elysee Palace, he said the team had prevented 30,000 small boat crossings and made 500 arrests in the past year.

Mr Sunak said the money would help “put an end to this disgusting trade in human life”.

He added: “Working together, the UK and France will ensure that nobody can exploit our systems with impunity.”

Mr Sunak said the new deal agreed by the two leaders will see 500 extra French law enforcement officers using “enhanced technology” such as drones to prevent Channel crossings.

The money will also go towards a new detention centre in France, adding to the 26 already in existence.

Downing Street said the detention centre would allow more migrants “to be removed from the French coast”.

Mr Sunak has made stopping the boats one of his key pledges for his government.

However, if the centre is completed on that timetable it would not fully functioning before an election is due in the UK, which can be held no later than January 2025.

Both men said the summit in Paris marked a new beginning in Anglo-French relations.

Mr Macron said it was a “moment of reconnection” while Mr Sunak described the meeting as an “entente renewed”.

The French leader had no qualms about putting his finger on what he thought had led the relationship into difficulties in recent years - Brexit.

Between the lines of his statement, that was a criticism of Mr Sunak’s three predecessors as UK prime minister and the tensions all have had with the EU.

During their press conference, the two leaders presented a strong sense of comradery - Mr Macron addressed “dear” Rishi, who in turned thanked “mon ami”, and the briefing concluded with an embrace.

However, it is clear this meeting was just the start of something more cooperative - a small step, no more.

A group of migrants brought to Dungeness in Kent, after being rescued by the RNLI

Last year saw a huge increase in the number of people trying to get the UK by crossing the English Channel in small, often flimsy boats.

For Mr Sunak, this is a domestic political issue.

At the start of 2023, he said tackling small boats was one of his priorities. He needs to see a reduction in boats reaching the UK in order to fulfil his pledge.

Mr Macron also wants to see the movements reduced - but for him the issue is one that has broader implications.

He wants European countries to look at the routes people take to reach western Europe.

Earlier this week, Mr Sunak unveiled a new Illegal Migration Bill.

Under the plans, anyone found to have entered the UK illegally would not only be removed within 28 days, but also be blocked from returning or claiming British citizenship in future.

Mr Sunak argues his new plan was “designed to break the business model of the criminal gangs and remove the pull factors, bringing them to the Channel coasts”.

However, the bill has been fiercely criticised by some charities and the UN’s refugee agency. It is also likely to face legal challenges.

Source: BBC

People (Check On Me), a tender cry for help that captured her at a crushing low point, has been streamed more than 150 million times since December.

It’s been number one for eight weeks on the UK’s Afrobeats chart. This Friday, it’s poised to enter the official Top 10 - a first for an artist from Cameroon.

“My whole life changed in a matter of hours,” says the singer. “I woke up in the morning and things had just flipped over.”

If you’ve heard People, you’ll know it from the hook alone.

“I’ve been drinking more alcohol for the last five days... Did you check on me?” sings the 22-year-old, her voice melancholy and mellifluous over a simple music box accompaniment.

The lyrics discuss her experience of the rare mood disorder cyclothymia, which causes emotional ups and downs that are similar to, but less extreme than, those of bipolar disorder.

She wrote the song last November, after throwing a Thanksgiving party where she “felt invisible”.

“I’d been at a low point of my life for at least two weeks and I was just like, ‘I can’t take any more of this’,” she explains over the phone from Paris.

“There were self-harmful thoughts, over-thinking, really anxious - a bunch of things going on in my head.”

While her friends were celebrating, Libianca spent much of the night crying in the bathroom.

When she came downstairs, no-one noticed her puffy red eyes. No-one asked how she was. They simply offered her a drink.

“I felt like I was drowning in it and nobody could see me and I just needed some help.

“So I decided, you know what? Let me just go in the studio, because I feel better whenever I’ve done something productive. That helps me.

“I wasn’t expecting for People to come out. It’s just how I was feeling. I couldn’t write about anything else.”

‘This song has been my best friend’

Retreating to the studio in her Minneapolis home, her feelings flooded out unfiltered.

The hook, she says, is the “raw truth” about her drinking. For days, she’d been consuming tequila and Ouzo with wine chasers in an attempt to blot out her depression.

“Whenever I was drunk, I didn’t feel sad, so why not just drink some more?” she recalls.

“Clearly, after a few days, I was like, I can’t keep going like this. I can’t keep waking up every morning hung over.”

“Right now I have the opportunity to show the rest of the world this is what I’m capable of.”

But the key to the song is the repeated refrain of “did you check on me?” It’s a post-pandemic plea to ask your friends how they’re really coping.

“After Covid, I feel like a lot of people became isolated. And no matter what anybody is going through, if you ask them, ‘How are