Fatal shooting at Swiss mosque

Police were alerted in St. Gallen at 2 p.m. (1200 UTC) on Friday, after a report that shots had been fired in the mosque.

Officers arrested a man who was carrying a handgun and found another man lying dead in the prayer hall, a spokesman for the cantonal police said. It was not immediately clear what the motive might have been.

However, an imam at the El-Hidaje mosque - where the shooting took place, told the Reuters news agency the shooting wsa tied to an inter-family feud and denied that the killing might have a political aspect.

"It's a personal conflict between two families, who were possibly settling a score," said Dragusha, who served as the imam of the El-Hidaje mosque for three years. "It's nothing political at all."

The El-Hidaje mosque is the hub of the town's significant Albanian population. Roughly 400,000 Muslims live in Switzerland making up some 5 percent of the population.

In 2009, the Swiss electorate voted in favor of a ban on new minarets, while resident of the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino last year voted to impose a ban on face-covering veils.

rc/mg (AFP, Reuters)