About 2,200 people watched a gunman's video of his attack outside a synagogue in Germany before it was removed from video-streaming site Twitch.
Twitch, which is owned by retail giant Amazon, said five people had watched the video as it was broadcast live.
The footage remained online for 30 minutes after the live stream, during which time more than 2,200 people watched it.
Twitch said the video was not promoted in its "recommended" feed.
"Our investigation suggests that people were co-ordinating and sharing the video via other online messaging services," the company said in a statement.
The attack happened in the city of Halle in eastern Germany at about 12:00 local time (10:00 GMT) on Wednesday.
The video showed a man making anti-Semitic comments to camera before driving to a synagogue and shooting at its door.
After failing to get in, the gunman shot dead two people nearby.
The suspect is a 27-year-old German who acted alone, according to local media.
In a statement, Twitch said it had a "zero-tolerance policy against hateful conduct".
"Any act of violence is taken extremely seriously. We worked with urgency to remove this content and will permanently suspend any accounts found to be posting or reposting content of this abhorrent act," it said.
The company said the account that live-streamed the attack had been created two months before the incident. It had only attempted to live-stream once before.
Twitch said it had shared a "hash" of the video with a group of tech companies including Microsoft and Facebook.
A video hash is essentially a "fingerprint" of a video that helps platforms detect if the same footage has been uploaded on their service.
Artificial intelligence
In March, an attack on a New Zealand mosque in which 51 people were killed was live-streamed on Facebook.
The social network was criticised for failing to prevent copies of videos of the Christchurch mosque shootings from being shared on its platform.
Facebook has since discussed plans to train algorithms to recognise videos of shootings so they can be detected and removed more quickly.
It plans to use footage from police body cameras, captured during training exercises, to teach its systems to detect videos of real-life shootings.
"We are far from solving this issue," said Christopher Tegho, a machine learning engineer at the video analytics firm Calipsa.
"Understanding a whole scene is a more difficult and complicated task.
"One of the issues is getting enough data to understand shooting scenes. That is why Facebook is asking police to collect this data, it's the first step."
In this photo taken from the Turkish side of the border between Turkey and Syria, in Akcakale, Sanliurfa province, southeastern Turkey, smoke billows from a fire inside Syria during bombardment by Turkish forces on Wednesday.
Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
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Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
As Turkish soldiers launched an assault on U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria and panicked civilians fled the battle zone, the White House sought to tamp down intense criticism over what many view as Washington's acquiescence in the incursion.
Turkey's forces crossed the border on Wednesday, carrying out airstrikes and artillery barrages against the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish militia that has fought alongside the U.S. in efforts to dismantle the Islamic State in Syria.
A Kurdish security officer takes off face masks from Alexanda Amon Kotey, left, and El Shafee Elsheikh, who were allegedly among four British jihadis who made up a brutal Islamic State cell dubbed "The Beatles," for an interview at a security center in Kobani, Syria, last year.
Hussein Malla/AP
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Hussein Malla/AP
Turkey accuses the SDF of having links with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, a Kurdish separatist group based in Turkey and Iraq, which is responsible for years of violent attacks within Turkey.
In case the Kurds or Turkey lose control, the United States has already taken the 2 ISIS militants tied to beheadings in Syria, known as the Beetles, out of that country and into a secure location controlled by the U.S. They are the worst of the worst!
Also on Wednesday, U.S. officials said two British nationals believed to be part of an ISIS group that released gruesome execution videos of themselves beheading hostages and were known as "The Beatles" because of their British accents, were moved out of a detention center in Syria into U.S. custody at an undisclosed location.
El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Amon Kotey, held by Kurdish fighters, were part of the group believed to have beheaded American journalist James Foley in August 2014.
The news came amid concern that Kurdish fighters who had been carrying out the fight against ISIS would be diverted to defending themselves against Turkish forces, providing an opening for a resurgence of the terrorist group.
Along the Turkey-Syria border, residents reportedly piled their belongings into vehicles or escaped on foot as Turkish forces struck several towns in the region. Plumes of smoke were seen rising near the town of Qamishli, which lies just over the border, late Wednesday, according to The Associated Press.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported fighting farther south between Turkish troops and Kurdish militiamen in the northern countryside of Aleppo.
Meanwhile, in Washington, President Trump condemned the Turkish incursion, calling it a "bad idea" and appeared to downplay the importance of the U.S. alliance with the SDF.
"The Kurds are fighting for their land," the president said, speaking to reporters in the Roosevelt Room.
"And as somebody wrote in a very, very powerful article today, they didn't help us in the Second World War, they didn't help us with Normandy as an example. They mentioned names of different battles. But they're there to help us with their land and that's a different thing," he said.
It wasn't clear what article Trump was referring to, but some suggested it was an opinion piece published Tuesday in the conservative Townhall.
In a major policy shift announced after a Sunday telephone call between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the White House said U.S. forces in the area of Turkey's planned operation would stand aside.
That decision has drawn concern and criticism at home and abroad, from U.S. allies and from within the ranks of the president's own party.
In a statement, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab expressed concern about Turkey's invasion "destabilizing the region, exacerbating humanitarian suffering, and undermining the progress made against" the Islamic State.
Speaking Monday on Fox News' Fox and Friends, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham called it an "impulsive decision" to remove U.S. troops from the area and allow Turkey a free hand against the Kurds, saying it was "short-sighted and irresponsible." In another appearance on Fox on Wednesday, Graham warned that abandoning the Kurds would be the biggest mistake of the Trump presidency.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has insisted that the U.S. did not give a green light to Turkey to launch its Northern Syria offensive.
Speaking with the PBS NewsHour, Pompeo said he's "confident that President Trump understands the threat" and touted the record of the White House on defeating ISIS in Syria.
"Remember where we were when this administration came into office and just judge us by our results," he said. "We have achieved a good outcome there."
BERLIN (Reuters) - A prominent Jewish community leader accused German authorities on Thursday of providing inadequate security at a synagogue that was attacked by a far-right gunman as dozens prayed inside.
Though the gunman did not get into the building in Wednesday’s attack, he killed two bystanders in a subsequent live-streamed rampage, which appeared to be modeled on last year’s gun attack on a New Zealand mosque.
“If police had been stationed outside the synagogue, then this man could have been disarmed before he could attack the others,” Josef Schuster, president of the council of Germany’s Jewish community, told Deutschlandfunk public radio.
Most Jewish institutions in Germany’s large cities have a near-permanent police guard due to occasional anti-Semitic attacks by both far-right activists and Islamist militants.
In a video of more than 30 minutes that the attacker livestreamed from a helmet camera, the perpetrator was heard cursing his failure to enter the synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle before shooting dead a woman passer-by in the street and a man inside a nearby kebab restaurant.
Two other people were injured but regional broadcaster MDR said their condition was not critical.
Police said they had detained one person, identified by the magazines Spiegel and Focus Online as a 27-year-old German, Stephan B. His full name cannot be published under German privacy laws.
Schuster said that while it was normal practice in his experience for all synagogues to have police guards while services were being conducted inside, this appeared not to be the case in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where Halle is located.
However, the head of Germany’s police union was skeptical about the feasibility of providing that level of protection.
“We’d have to guard every synagogue, every church, every mosque, every holy place in Germany around the clock, so I don’t know if this was a mistake or if this really couldn’t have been foreseen,” Oliver Malchow told public television.
Slideshow (27 Images)
In the event, the synagogue’s solid locked gates and high walls provided ample protection against the attacker’s seemingly improvised weapons.
Malchow also defended police in Halle who took 15 minutes to reach the synagogue, saying they could only respond after receiving reports about the incident, and that armored units often had to come from greater distances.
“This shows how thin the level of police coverage is,” he said. “Nobody is holding back ... it probably wasn’t possible to be quicker.”
Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Gareth Jones
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey said its forces seized designated targets on the second day of an offensive against a Kurdish militia in Syria, after a withdrawal by U.S. forces opened up a dangerous new phase in the region’s eight-year-old conflict.
Senior members of U.S. President Donald Trump’s own Republican Party condemned him for making way for the incursion and abandoning Syrian Kurds, who have been loyal allies of Washington in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.
NATO-ally Turkey has said it intends to create a “safe zone” for the return of millions of refugees to Syria. But world powers fear Turkey’s action could deepen the conflict, and runs the risk of Islamic State prisoners escaping from camps amid the chaos.
The Kurdish-led authority in northern Syria said a prison struck by Turkish shelling holds “the most dangerous criminals from more than 60 nationalities” and Turkey’s attacks on its prisons risked “a catastrophe”.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) holds thousands of Islamic State fighters and tens of thousands of their relatives in detention.
Turkey said its offensive was making gains.
“Our heroic commandos taking part in Operation Peace Spring are continuing to advance east of the Euphrates (river),” the Defence Ministry wrote on Twitter. “The designated targets were seized,” it said in a later statement.
CNN Turk broadcast video showing a crane overnight removing a concrete block from the border wall and commandos moving in single-file alongside the barrier.
In the Turkish border town of Akcakale, around 30 vehicles carrying Syrian rebels, many pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft machines drove along the main along the Turkish side of the border from Syria’s Tel Abyad, a Reuters journalist said.
VOLLEYS OF ROCKETS
They were accompanied by some 10 Turkish military armored vehicles. It was not clear where they were heading. Earlier, a witness in Akcakale said volleys of rockets were fired from there across the border.
Turkish forces shelled targets near Ral al Ain on Thursday morning, and SDF fighters responded, a witness said.
The Turkish military has hit 181 targets of the Kurdish militia with its air force and artillery since the start of operation into northeast Syria, the ministry said.
One of the prisons where Islamic State detainees are held was hit by a Turkish air strike, the SDF said on Twitter.
The U.S. military has taken custody of two high-profile IS militants previously held in Syria by the SDF and moved them out of the country to a secure location, a U.S. official said.
A second U.S. official said they belonged to a group of British fighters nicknamed “The Beatles,” who have been tied to the murder of Western hostages.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s communications director, in an article published hours before the offensive started, said Trump had agreed to transfer leadership of the international campaign against Islamic State to Turkey.
Fahrettin Altun said Turkey had helped Syrian rebels holding IS captives earlier in Syria’s war, adding it was in Turkey’s interest “to preserve what the United States has accomplished”.
Akcakale was quiet for much of the morning after sporadic gunfire and the sound of tank movement were heard in the early hours, Reuters journalists said. Explosions had rocked Tel Abyad earlier in the night, they said.
Turkey regards the Kurdish militia as a terrorist group because of its links to Kurdish PKK militants waging a decades-old insurgency in southeast Turkey.
Smoke rises from Tel Arkam village in Ras al Ain countryside, Syria October 10, 2019. REUTERS/Stringer
Troops entered Syria at four points, two of them close to Tel Abyad and two close to Ras al Ain further east, according to Turkish media reports. Air strikes killed at least five civilians and three SDF fighters, while dozens of civilians were wounded, the SDF said. Thousands of people fled Ras al Ain towards Hasaka province, held by the SDF.
SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali said the group’s fighters had repelled a ground attack by Turkish troops in Tel Abyad.
SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING
President Trump called the Turkish assault a “bad idea” and said he did not endorse it. He said he expected Turkey to protect civilians and religious minorities and prevent a humanitarian crisis - as Turkey has said it would.
The United Nations Security Council will meet on Thursday to discuss Syria at the request of the five European members, Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and Poland.
In a letter to the 15-member Council seen by Reuters, Turkey said that its military operation would be “proportionate, measured and responsible.”
The 22-member Arab League said it will hold an emergency meeting on Saturday.
On Wednesday Trump defended U.S. policy towards Kurds, saying it had sent them “tremendous amounts” in arms and funds.
“The Kurds are fighting for their land...As somebody wrote in a very powerful article today, they didn’t help us in the Second World War, they didn’t help us with Normandy as an example... But they were there to help us with their land, and that’s a different thing,” Trump said.
“With all of that being said we like the Kurds.”
But one of Trump’s closest fellow Republican allies, Senator Lindsey Graham, said failing to support the Kurds would be “the biggest mistake of his presidency”.
Slideshow (3 Images)
The Syrian Kurdish group was for years one of Washington’s main allies in Syria and the incursion was potentially one of the biggest shifts in years in the Syrian war that has drawn in global and regional powers.
The Kurds played a leading role in taking territory from IS, and now hold the largest swathe of Syria outside of the hands of President Bashar al-Assad.
Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun in Ankara; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, William Maclean
At least eight people were killed -- including three Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters and five civilians -- and dozens of others were injured during the first day of the Turkish military operation, the SDF tweeted late Wednesday.
International aid agencies say that hundreds of thousands of people, who have already endured eight years of a protracted conflict, could be at risk as Turkey launches air and ground strikes to clear US-allied Kurdish forces from its border areas.
"As Turkish offensive in Syria begins, the IRC is deeply concerned about the lives and livelihoods of the two million civilians in northeast Syria who have already survived ISIS brutality and multiple displacements," the International Rescue Committee said in a statement Thursday.
As a barrage of airstrikes and artillery fire volleyed into northern Syria Wednesday, chaotic scenes unfolded on the ground as people tried to flee to safety. Roads were gridlocked with hundreds of fleeing families, motorcycles piled with five to six people and mattresses strapped to cars.
Reports began to filter in on Wednesday following the aerial bombardment, with the SDF tweeting that two civilians had been killed and two others injured in the village of Misharrafa, west of Ras al-Ain.
The US-backed SDF said civilian homes in the village of Sikarkah in eastern Qamishli and areas near the Bouzra dam in Derik -- which provides water to hundreds of thousands of civilians in northern Syria -- were also targeted.
The group has called on the international community for assistance, saying the border areas of northeast Syria "are on the edge of a possible humanitarian catastrophe."
Turkey, which maintains the aim of the offensive is to eliminate "terrorists" in Syria, said it had hit a total of 181 targets belonging to a "terror organization," the Turkish Defense Ministry said Wednesday.
US 'didn't give Turkey green light'
Turkey's offensive came just days after the Trump administration announced it was pulling US troops back from the area, prompting outrage in Congress and accusations from senior Republican lawmakers that Trump allowed Turkey to attack an ally that it considers instrumental in the fight against ISIS.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called claimsthat the US withdrawal of troops was a green light for the slaughter of the Kurds "false."
"The United States didn't give Turkey a green light," Pompeo said in an interview with PBS NewsHour.
Pompeo said that "it became very clear" after the phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan "that there were American soldiers that were going to be at risk and the President made a decision to put them in a place where they were out of harm's way."
Pompeo also refused to explicitly endorse the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) as US allies.
The SDF who operate in the area are US allies. They are led by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey considers a terrorist organization.
President Donald Trump has also downplayed the alliance with the Kurds, 11,000 of whom died fighting to help the US mission against ISIS. "They didn't help us in the second World War, they didn't help us with Normandy for example," he said.
Trump has defended his decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria, but added that the US "does not endorse" Turkey's operation.
"The United States does not endorse this attack and has made it clear to Turkey that this operation is a bad idea," the President said in a statement from the White House.
Trump also appeared open to discussions of bipartisan legislation on sanctions against Turkey, sponsored in part by his ally Sen. Lindsey Graham. Trump said he agreed that sanctions are needed, but only if Turkey doesn't act in a "humane" way.
ISIS 'may rise up again'
The SDF said in a statement Wednesday that it had suspended its military operations against ISIS in northern Syria following the "Turkish aggression."
There are fears that Turkey's military offensive could lead to a resurgence of ISIS and American officials have expressed concern that thousands of ISIS fighters may escape from prisons in Syria. Some SDF fighters had left their posts at various prisons to prepare for the Turkish offensive.
Turkey's assault has already had a "detrimental effect" on American counter-ISIS operations, which have "effectively stopped," a senior US defense official told CNN on Wednesday.
The Turkish offensive, the official said, "has challenged our ability to build local security forces, conduct stabilization operations and the Syrian Democratic Forces' (ability) to guard over 11,000 dangerous ISIS fighters."
When asked Wednesday about the threat of ISIS prisoners escaping, Trump claimed that some of the most dangerous ISIS prisoners had been moved, "putting them in other areas where it's secure."
He dismissed the overall threat, replying, "Well, they're going to be escaping to Europe."
Two officials said the transfer was made Wednesday. One of the officials said there are plans to bring the two ISIS members, Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, to the US for prosecution. The two have been held in northern Syria by the SDF for more than a year.
The State Department accused their ISIS execution cell of "holding captive and beheading approximately two dozen hostages," including James Foley, American journalist Steven Sotloff, and American aid worker Peter Kassig.
Pompeo on Wednesday said that Trump "is mindful that ISIS might begin to rise up again."
He acknowledged that the terror group has not been eliminated in Syria, saying "That challenge still remains."
"The President firmly believes it is now time that we reprioritize, that we, in fact, protect America first, and that we get our force posture in the Middle East just right," he said.
CNN's Ryan Browne, Clarissa Ward, Evan Perez, Nicole Gaouette, Alex Marquardt, Jennifer Hansler, Isil Sariyuce, Hamdi Alkhshali, and Sharif Paget contributed reporting.
09 October 2019, Saxony-Anhalt, Landsberg: Police officers walk along a hedge with machine guns in their hands near Wiedersdorf/Landsberg. Besides the shots in Halle, there were also shots in Landsberg (Saalekreis) about 15 kilometres away. (Photo by Jan Woitas/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Wednesday's shooting in the eastern German city of Halle outside of a synagogue was livestreamed on Amazon's Twitch service, the company confirmed to CNBC. The video was 35 minutes long. Two people were killed in the attack, German police said earlier in the day.
"We are shocked and saddened by the tragedy that took place in Germany today, and our deepest condolences go out to all those affected," a Twitch spokesperson said. "Twitch has a zero-tolerance policy against hateful conduct, and any act of violence is taken extremely seriously. We are working with urgency to remove this content and permanently suspend any accounts found to be posting or reposting content of this abhorrent act."
NBC News reported that the video showed the shooter parking near the synagogue and shooting a woman before he entered the building. He wasn't able to enter the synagogue and shot another person after driving to a kebab shop. The video was also posted to 10 white-supremacist Telegram channels where they were accessibly by tens of thousands of users, NBC News said.
It shows the growing problem that streaming platforms are facing: When people want to commit evil, they can broadcast their crimes to an audience using social networks, which can amplify their reach.
Twitch is a platform that was built to allow video gamers to livestream their games while chatting with their audience. Other companies have dealt with similar problems.
The footage is no longer on Twitch. CNBC was able to find links to download the video on other sites including 4Chan, however.
The New Zealand mosque massacre, which claimed 50 lives, was livestreamed to Facebook in March. Facebook said it worked to remove 1.5 million videos of the attack that were posted in 24 hours after it was initially streamed, and that 1.2 million of them were "blocked at upload," by Facebook. YouTube, Twitter and Reddit also removed versions of the New Zealand livestream from their sites.
— CNBC's Lauren Feiner contributed to this report. NBC News contributed to this report.
