Germany has experienced its second multiple shooting within 10 days, adding weight to calls for stronger gun laws, while the killing of a teacher in a separate incident has caused concern that the country could be heading for further "American-style" violence.
Yesterday morning a 34-year-old Turkish man killed himself after shooting seven members of one family when his proposal to marry one of the daughters was rejected.
The man, a former Islamic teacher in Bielefeld, near Hanover, had been chased out of town because of his relationship with the young woman.
Although he already was married with four children, the killer, who was named yesterday morning only as Mehmit K, wanted to take the 19-year-old young woman, named as Zuebeyde T, as his second wife.
A year after leaving Bielefeld because of the disapproval of the Muslim community there he returned with a gun and killed her and six other members of her family.
Halit T (61), his son Mehmit T (29) and his wife Ayse T (32) were all killed, along with Halit's daughter, Ayse C (26), and her husband, Kamal C (31). Halit's other daughter, Esenguel T (17), died yesterday afternoon in hospital.
A five-year-old and two three-year-old children were in the flat when the man burst in and started shooting, but they were not injured.
A police spokesman in Bielefeld, Mr Martin Schultz, said: "The man was already married and had four children in Tubingen. But he wanted to marry the 19-year-old daughter of this family and have her as his second wife."
The man drove for several hours to Tubingen, near Stuttgart, where his pregnant wife and children live, after the attack.
He was spotted there in his car shortly before 5 a.m. yesterday but shot himself through the head with a pistol before police could arrest him.
The shock in Germany over the incident adds to that sparked 10 days before when Martin Peyerl (16) shot and killed his teenage sister and three passersby in the small Alpine town of Bad Reichenhall.
He broke into his father's gun cabinet and used a number of large-bore weapons to take potshots at anyone in the street, immediately killing an elderly couple and seriously injuring six other people, one of whom died shortly afterwards.
Less than an hour after starting to shoot out of a window in his parents' family house, Martin killed himself with a shot to the head, using a revolver.
That bloodbath prompted headlines such as "The American nightmare now in Germany". Such fears were amplified by this week's killing of a teacher in front of her class in the eastern town of Meissen, near Dresden.
A 15-year-old boy walked into the classroom armed with two kitchen knives and fatally stabbed the woman. He was arrested several hours later and told police he had killed the teacher because he hated her.
The boy, named only as Andreas S, had told classmates he intended to kill Ms Sigrun Leuteritz (44), but they had teased him, saying he would never do it. Some even laid bets on it.
A survey conducted after the Bad Reichenhall incident showed 76 per cent of Germans would now support a complete ban on private holding of weapons.
