text: President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, joined by Israeli ambassador Jeremy Issacharoff and local officials, laid flowers Thursday at the Halle temple before meeting with Jewish community representatives inside. He later told reporters that the country had a duty to protect Jews on its soil, also in light of its historical guilt for the Holocaust.
  In a copy of a 35-minute video obtained by AFP the gunman filmed himself launching into a diatribe against women and Jews and denying the Holocaust, before carrying out the attack. The video's authenticity has been confirmed by the SITE monitoring group but not by police.
  In the video, he was seen trying to force open the synagogue door before shooting dead a female passer-by. He then tried unsuccessfully to blast open the gate of the Jewish cemetery with explosives. The man was later seen shooting at a customer at a kebab shop about 600 metres (yards) away from the synagogue.
  Jewish community leader Max Privorotzki told the Stuttgarter Zeitung of the harrowing minutes as the site came under assault. "We saw through the camera of our synagogue that a heavily armed perpetrator wearing a steel helmet and rifle was trying to shoot open our door," he said.
  Between 70 and 80 people were in the synagogue. "We barricaded our doors from inside and waited for the police," he said. "Then we carried on with our service."