German Web hoax snares pilgrims
BERLIN (Reuters) - Hundreds of Muslims have flocked to a German hospital where an Internet site said the Messiah was being breast-fed by its resurrected mother.
Hospital spokesman Burkhard Buescher said on Thursday large groups of women with children were among those who had travelled across Germany and from the nearby Netherlands in the last fortnight asking porters at the Essen university clinic to let them visit the "Messiah".
"The story ended up being that there was a woman in the clinic who had given birth to the Messiah and who had died. She was later dug up and was still alive but her whole body was burned -- just her two breasts were unharmed," said Buescher.
"Allah ordered the woman to feed the child for 40 days and then die again. This crazy story was seen by people on a Turkish Internet site," he said.
On the Internet portal Turkdunya.de, chatterers discussed the story and one contributor claimed to have seen the woman.
Hospital guards had told visitors there was no such woman in the maternity clinic, and the number of visitors had dwindled since German media reported the story was an Internet hoax, Buescher said.
"But some people just wanted to believe it."
