Cii Radio| Ayesha Ismail| 20 December 2016| 20 Rabi ul Awal 1438
Suspect fired shots at worshippers at Zurich Islamic centre before fleeing scene, leaving victims seriously wounded.
A man burst into a Muslim prayer hall in the Swiss city of Zurich and started shooting, wounding at least three men.
A body found a few hundred metres from the scene was that of the shooter who attacked the city’s Islamic Centre, police confirmed on Tuesday.
At around 5:30pm on Monday (1630 GMT), the unidentified attacker entered the Islamic Centre where several worshippers were gathered and began firing, Zurich police said in a statement.
He “fired several shots at the worshippers,” police said. “Three men, aged 30, 35 and 56, were injured, some seriously. The suspect then escaped from the mosque in the direction of Central Station,” it said.
Witnesses described the gunman as a man aged about 30 wearing dark clothes and a dark woollen cap, witnesses said.
Search operation
Police have urged witnesses who were in the area around the time of the shooting to come forward. The motive for the shooting was still unclear.
About a dozen people were inside the prayer hall at the time of the attack, the ATS news agency reported, citing a number of people on site, adding a prayer service had been scheduled for 4:45pm (1545 GMT).
The worshippers were mainly from North Africa, Somalia and Eritrea, ATS reported.
The body was discovered on the river bank, underneath the bridge, and had been draped with a white sheet.
A number of Swiss mosques, including one near Zurich and the main one in Geneva, have in recent months been accused in the media of allowing or encouraging the “radicalisation” of their worshippers, especially the younger members of their congregations.
Switzerland, a country of some eight million people, reportedly has some 450,000 Muslims.
Source – Al Jazeera
