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Victoria Sikhs mourn victims

Prayer service set for this afternoon

The Sikh community in Victoria is mourning the victims of the deadly shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, holding a prayer meeting today in their honour.

"Everybody is grieving here," said Rick Purewal, president of the Khalsa Diwan Society of Victoria.

At least six people died when a man entered a Sikh Temple near Milwaukee and opened fire. One of those killed was the president of the temple, Satwant Singh Kaleka, 65.

"We're feeling for those people. Some people have relatives there - I have a friend who lives around there," said Purewal, adding his friend wasn't in the temple at the time of the killings.

Purewal said everyone is welcome at the Sikh temple at 1210 Topaz Ave. from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. for the prayer session, hosted by the Khalsa Diwan Society of Victoria.

"It doesn't matter what race you are, what colour you are - we welcome every single person," Purewal said.

Police said the gunman, Wade Michael Page, was a failed soldier who played in white supremacist heavy metal bands.

Page described himself as a member of the "Hammerskins Nation," a skinhead group rooted in Texas that has branches in Australia and Canada, according to the SITE Monitoring Service, a Maryland-based private intelligence firm that searches the Internet for extremist activity.

However, Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards cautioned that the motive for the attack might never be known. So far, no hatefilled manifesto has emerged, nor any angry blog or Facebook entries.

With their turbans and beards, Sikhs are often mistaken for Muslims or Arabs, and have been targeted in post-Sept. 11 bias attacks in the U.S. The New Yorkbased Sikh Coalition reported more than 700 incidents in the U.S. since 2001.