Personal motive in church suicide bombing

GERMAN police yesterday identified the suicide bomber who killed two other people and herself in a Frankfurt church on Christmas Eve as a 49-year-old woman who had been receiving psychiatric treatment. Thirteen people were injured in the blast, caused by two grenades strapped to the woman's abdomen which exploded during a crowded midnight service.

Police believe that the motive for the attack was personal, rather than political or religious, and that the woman only intended to kill herself. "She completely underestimated the effect of the hand grenades," a police spokesman said yesterday.

The woman was identified from a photograph of her severed head released by police after the explosion. She looked younger than her 49 years with long, dark hair and blue eyes. She had been separated from her husband and 9-year-old daughter for a year and was under psychiatric supervision for a long time.

Mourners gathered yesterday at the little protest ant church in Sindlingen, a working class suburb of Frankfurt, to pray for the dead and injured. Two elderly sisters seated next to the bomber were killed instantly by the blast and a 12 year-old girl is among those still in a serious condition in hospital.

"Christmas has brought us more questions than answers this year. We have injuries among us in body and spirit. But the injuries among us will bind us together," the Rev Bernd Wangerin told worshippers yesterday.

Police did not name the bomber but said she came originally from a district near Sindlingen but had been living on the other side of Frankfurt. The woman arrived at the church by public transport and slipped into a pew near the back shortly after the service began.

Worshippers noticed that she continued to wear a heavy winter cape inside the church and that her face was partly concealed by a scarf. As the congregation began singing a Christmas hymn, they heard a dull bang and saw pieces of shrapnel and human flesh flying through the air. Many ran screaming out of the church and, within minutes, dozens of ambulances and fire trucks converged on the scene. Doctors and psychologists treated worshippers and the church's pastor, who is due to retire next week, for shock throughout the night.

Police said yesterday that they did not find a suicide note at the woman's flat and they are investigating how she acquired the two eastern-European grenades that caused the explosion.

. A newborn baby died of cold on Christmas Eve, in the arms of his homeless mother, on the streets of Goettingen in central Germany.

The 28-year-old mother, who gave birth alone, wandered the streets with her infant for several hours before turning up at a centre for the homeless, by which time the baby boy was dead, police said.