A Pennsylvania man was found guilty Friday on federal charges of fatally shooting 11 people and wounding seven others at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, a verdict that makes him eligible for the death penalty for what authorities say was the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.

A 12-member jury in federal court in Pittsburgh convicted Robert G. Bowers, 50, of Baldwin, Pa., on all 63 counts, including hate crimes and weapons violations, after two weeks of searing testimony from dozens of prosecution witnesses. Among those who testified were survivors, including police officers, who had been shot during the attack.

Prosecutors also played haunting 911 emergency calls, during which victims could be heard screaming and struggling to breathe before dying amid rapid gunfire from Bowers, who used an AR-15 assault rifle and three handguns.

Five police officers were wounded as they attempted to apprehend Bowers during the attack on Oct. 27, 2018, in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, a longtime Jewish enclave. Bowers fatally shot six victims in the head and fired about 100 rounds of ammunition in all, prosecutors said.

"The defendant turned this sacred ground of worship into a hunting ground," prosecutor Mary Hahn told the jurors in her closing arguments Thursday, according to local news accounts.

The jury deliberated for a total of about five hours over two days before reaching the verdict.

Bowers's defense team, which did not call any witnesses and introduced no evidence, did not dispute that he carried out the massacre. In her opening statement, public defender Judy Clarke suggested that Bowers was motivated to violence not because of a hatred of Jews, but rather because he feared that congregants were aiding immigrants, whom he considered a threat to Americans.

"None of this is true," another defense attorney, Elisa Long, said during her closing arguments Thursday. "But it is what Mr. Bowers believed to be true."

Bowers sat next to his lawyers at the defense table during the trial, but he did not testify. Survivors and family members of the victims also attended the proceedings each day.

"I am grateful to God for getting us to this day," Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Tree of Life congregation said in a statement after the verdict Friday. "Today I'm focused on being with my congregation and praying, singing and clapping in praise of God as we do each Shabbat."

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, said in a statement that the verdict was "a step toward justice in Pittsburgh, but the horror and pain of October 27, 2018 will never go away."

The first phase of the trial determined whether Bowers would be found guilty or not guilty of the charges. A second phase, now that a jury found him guilty, will determine whether he will face the death penalty or life in prison. U.S. District Judge Robert Colville said he expected the second phase to begin June 26.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, and the next phase of the trial could last up to six weeks, authorities said.

Defense lawyers have filed motions stating that Bowers suffers from schizophrenia and epilepsy, brain impairments that they could argue are mitigating factors against capital punishment. Prosecutors rejected a defense offer of a plea agreement that would have resulted in Bowers spending the rest of his life in prison. Colville permitted prosecutors to conduct their own psychiatric analysis of Bowers in the days before the trial began in late May. The results remain confidential.

If the jury does not find unanimously in favor of capital punishment, Bowers would automatically receive a sentence of life in prison, under federal sentencing guidelines.

The conviction comes as the Justice Department has sought to bolster efforts to combat a nationwide spike in hate crimes, which reached a 30-year high in the United States in 2021, according to FBI statistics.

In 2022, the Anti-Defamation League tallied 3,697 antisemitic incidents nationwide - including assaults, harassment and vandalism - a 36 percent increase from the year before and the most since the group began collecting such data in 1979.

Amy Spitalnick, chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, tweeted Friday that the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue was "part of a broader cycle of right-wing extremism in which each attack inspires the next. And in the five years since Tree of Life, the white supremacist conspiracy theory behind it has been fully normalized in our politics and our society."

During the first phase of the trial, prosecutors called an FBI specialist to read dozens of vile anti-Semitic messages and memes that Bowers posted on Gab, a social media website popular with far-right extremists, including neo-Nazis. Witnesses testified that Bowers entered the Tree of Life synagogue on a Saturday morning when members of three congregations - Tree of Life, Dor Hadash and New Light - that shared the building were observing Shabbat prayer services.

Bowers killed members of each congregation, moving through the building from the chapel to the basement and stalking his victims in the pews, a kitchen and a supply closet.

Myers testified that he survived after hiding in a bathroom for more than 40 minutes, one hand clutching the door handle in case Bowers tried to burst in. Dan Leger, who was wounded, testified that he thought he was going to bleed to death from a gunshot to the abdomen in a synagogue stairway before being rescued by a police officer.

Bowers retreated to an empty children's classroom on the third floor and engaged in a fierce shootout with SWAT team officers, during which he was shot and surrendered after running out of bullets.

Those killed were: Rose Mallinger, 97; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Dan Stein, 71; Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Joyce Fienberg, 75; Melvin Wax, 87; Irving Younger, 69; and Richard Gottfried, 65. Leger and Andrea Wedner, Mallinger's daughter, were shot but survived.

On the final day of testimony Wednesday, Wedner, 66, testified that she and her mother tried to hide in the pews of the Pervin Chapel. Bowers found them after returning to the room and shot them both.

When police officers found her, she said she kissed her fingers and pressed them to her mother's skin, calling out, "Mommy," as they led her out.

After Wedner finished testifying and left the courtroom, prosecutors played the audio recording of her 911 emergency call. She could be heard saying, "Oh God, I can't believe this is happening" amid screaming in the chapel.

After the recording ended, prosecutors rested their case.