Yahoo News Thousands watched livestream of German gunman kill two people on Amazon's Twitch
Thousands of people watched a gunman’s rampage that left two people dead in Germany after it was apparently livestreamed on Amazon’s gaming site Twitch.
The gunman tried to force his way into a synagogue in Germany then shot two people nearby - one in the street and one in a kebab shop - in the attack on Wednesday. Police said the gunman has been arrested.
The Site Intelligence Group, which tracks online extremism, said a 36-minute video posted on livestreaming site Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, started with the assailant saying "my name is Anon and I think the Holocaust never happened".
The video, filmed with a head-mounted camera, shows the heavily-armed gunman driving up to the synagogue in the eastern city of Halle on and trying to get in whilst ranting about Jews.
When he fails to get into the synagogue, where up to 80 people were observing the holy day of Yom Kippur, he drives a short distance to the kebab shop where he opens fire as customers flee.
The livestream of the attack echoes the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March when a far-right white supremacist killed 51 people at two mosques and livestreamed much of it on Facebook.
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In a statement Twitch, which is often used to watch other people play video games, said it was "shocked and saddened" by the attack.
It said: “We worked with urgency to remove this content and will permanently suspend any accounts found to be posting or reposting content of this abhorrent act.”
Germany's interior minister Horst Seehofer said authorities must assume that it was an anti-Semitic attack.
The head of Halle's Jewish community, Max Privorozki, told Der Spiegel that a surveillance camera at the entrance of the synagogue showed a person trying to break into the building.
He said: "The assailant shot several times at the door and also threw several Molotov cocktails, firecrackers or grenades to force his way in.
"But the door remained closed - God protected us. The whole thing lasted perhaps five to 10 minutes."
Conrad Roessler, who was in the kebab shop, described a man with a helmet and a military jacket throwing something that looked like a grenade, which bounced off the door frame, before opening fire.
"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.
Authorities said shortly after the shooting that a person had been arrested and federal prosecutors, who in Germany handle cases involving suspected terrorism or national security, have taken over the investigation.
They have not released any details on the suspect, who has been named in the media as a 27-year-old German citizen from Saxony-Anhalt state, where Halle is.
