GERMANY:German police have appealed for witnesses to a suspected Mafia killing that left six people dead in a Chinese restaurant early yesterday.
A 47-year-old unnamed man found the bodies shortly after midnight yesterday when he went to pick up his wife from her shift at the Lin Yue restaurant in the town of Sittensen, 30km southwest of Hamburg.
He found the bodies of three men and three women - including that of his wife - strewn throughout the first-floor restaurant. The victims, all of Asian descent, had been tied up and shot dead.
Only two people survived the attack: a young child, believed to be that of the restaurant's dead owners, and a restaurant employee in a critical condition in hospital with gunshot wounds.
"He's not in a position to be questioned and it doesn't look like that's going to change," the police spokesman said of the injured man.
Forensic specialists arrived at the restaurant yesterday afternoon and local police said they had no idea of a motive for the attack.
"It's not a normal murder because otherwise the federal police wouldn't have stepped in," said a local police spokesman. They refused to dismiss the possibility of an organised crime background. Police sources say they are aware of, but powerless to act against, widespread protection money rackets that Chinese gangs operate in Germany.
Police have appealed for witnesses to come forward, in particular locals who dined on Sunday evening at the popular restaurant.
Shocked neighbours gathered behind the police barrier yesterday morning. They said the restaurant's owners, a married couple they called Enni and Denni who moved to the town a decade ago, were popular figures in the community.
"They always said hello and shook my hand," said Peter Senkpiel, a neighbour who last dined in the restaurant with his family on Saturday evening.
The dead couple had one child and lived in the third storey of the modern office building, above their restaurant.
"We didn't hear a thing, no shots, no screams," said one woman who lives opposite the restaurant.
The seventh victim was fighting for his life in hospital yesterday, with a round-the-clock police guard.