Hamburg, March 10 (AFP/APP): One by one, black body bags under flurries of snow are wheeled out from the unassuming Jehovah’s Witness centre where six people were killed in the German city of Hamburg.
“The world has gone mad,” says one mourner holding a bouquet of white roses and approaching the entrance of the brick building, cordoned off by police.
The body bags are carefully placed in hearses before being driven away and the man with the bouquet leaves with his flowers still in hand.
“It really upsets me,” says Tatjana Popczy, who lives just 200 metres (yards) from the centre where a former member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses burst into a service at around 9:00 pm (2000 GMT) on Thursday, killing six people.
There is nothing remarkable about the building, located on a busy thoroughfare between a petrol station and auto repair shops.
The group’s logo, a small square with “JW” in white letters on a blue background, is affixed to the facade.
“It doesn’t matter where it is, it’s awful,” says Popczy as a clutch of people come to pay their respects and place flowers in front of a sign displaying the centre’s opening hours. “I cannot understand how you could do such a thing.”
Across the road, residents in a large apartment complex describe the Jehovah’s Witnesses opposite as “discreet”.
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