Right-to-die group barred from premises

It was the second blow for the non-profit association this year, after it was forced to move from a previous suburban Zurich apartment when residents complained.

Last week, the local council ordered the charity to stop using the new apartment and apply to change its official function from a residence to an "assisted suicide flat."

"Dignitas continued to ignore the ban and still carried out assisted suicides," council official Daniel Scheidegger told Reuters. "So we decided to enforce the ban."

Six people have taken their lives at the new flat in recent weeks, residents say. Another was due to die Wednesday.

"Another client came today and local residents talked to the Dignitas employees who were with her," said Christiane Keller, 61, who lives next door to the apartment in the suburb of Staefa.

The police were called and local authorities later arrived to change the locks on the flat, preventing the Dignitas workers from entering.

"The woman who was supposed to die was taken away again. I don't know where she went," Keller told Reuters.

The council estimates that 200 people a year would have committed suicide in the apartment had Dignitas been allowed to continue its activities.

Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland and has been allowed since the 1940s. Non-physicians can participate in assisted suicide but euthanasia is not legal.

The laws, some of the most liberal in the world, have led in recent years to "suicide tourism," where terminally ill foreigners travel to Switzerland to die.

Dignitas head Ludwig Minelli was not immediately available for comment.

By mid-2006, Minelli said he helped arrange 573 deaths through Dignitas, formed in 1998.

The constant sight of coffins has disturbed Dignitas's neighbors in Staefa. Keller, who has lived in the 1970s housing development for 24 years, said residents' health had suffered.

"It was an enormous burden," she said. "We are not against assisted suicide but it should take place in a location where the neighbors are not involved in it."