Germany grieves after school slaughter

Flags flew at half mast across Germany yesterday amid nationwide mourning for the 15 mainly female victims of a teenage gunman in a picturesque town.

Hundreds of candles were left outside the school in Winnenden where 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer picked off nine pupils and three teachers before killing three other people in the town.

Kretschmer turned the gun on himself in a shootout with police, leaving the Winnender Zeitung local newspaper to question "Why?" in giant letters on an otherwise blank black front page yesterday.

Thousands of people packed churches for special services on Wednesday night and a vigil was held outside the school on what Chancellor Angela Merkel called "a day of mourning for all of Germany".

"Our thoughts go out to the families and the friends. We are thinking of you and we are praying for you," she said.

The same question was being asked on the streets of the town north of Stuttgart.

"There is more violence than there was 10 years ago," Heidi Loebe, a salesman, said. "I do not understand it. This was a boy who had finished his studies and begun a training course."

Police have given no motive for the slaughter. Eleven of the 12 victims at the school were female, and nearly all were expertly shot in the head.

Kretschmer went into one classroom three times, the Bild daily said. On the third visit he told the class: "Aren't you all dead yet?" A teacher threw herself in front of a female pupil - and was shot by the gunman, Bild said.

Heribert Rech, interior minister of the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg where the massacre took place, said there was nothing to indicate that the teenager held a grudge against the school.

After leaving school last year, Kretschmer had enrolled on a course to train as a salesman. He regularly worked out at the gym and belonged to a sports club.

"He was completely unremarkable, there was nothing in his background to suggest this could have happened," the minister said. Fellow students described him as "quiet" and "reserved", even "friendly".

Kretschmer came from a prosperous family. His father is a successful businessman who employs 150 people, according to media reports. His shocked parents and sister have been taken to a secret location, German television reported.

But he found it difficult to fit in at school and had few friends. "He was simply not accepted by anyone and just sat all day in front of his computer," a school colleague identified at Mario told German television station N24.

Reports also said he was very keen on computer shooting games - especially the violent "Counter-Strike" - and had become a real-life crackshot at the shooting range.

His father owned more than a dozen guns, all locked away except the nine millimetre Beretta that caused the carnage.

Mr Rech said Kretschmer had "destroyed the soul of an entire school and ripped into the heart of a town".

The rampage, which lasted more than three hours, ended with a shootout in the car park of a shopping centre about 30 kilometres from Winnenden, during which Kretschmer was shot in the leg.

State police chief Erwin Hetger said it was believed he had turned the gun on himself.

The school remains cordoned off and there have been calls for it to stay closed for ever.

The tragedy has brought back haunting memories of a similar bloodbath in Erfurt in eastern Germany in 2002 which left 17 dead, including the gunman.

Wednesday's incident has already reheated a debate over gun control.

Gun laws were tightened after Erfurt and there have already been calls for even stricter laws and a ban on violent computer games.

Wolfgang Dicke, a police gun crime expert, told Der Spiegel: "Our gun laws can barely be tightened because they are already so tight."