Tag Archives: Death

U.N. lauds U.S.-Russian truce in Syria, but warns on partition risk

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura attends a news conference during the Intra Syria talks at the U.N. offices in Geneva, Switzerland

By Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Agreements to de-escalate the fighting in Syria could simplify the conflict and help to stabilise the country, but such accords must be an interim measure and avoid partition, U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura told a news conference on Monday.

Speaking at the start of five days of peace talks in Geneva, de Mistura said discussions were being held in Amman to monitor implementation of a ceasefire for southwest Syria brokered by the United States and Russia, the first peacemaking effort of the war by the U.S. government under President Donald Trump.

“When two superpowers … agree fundamentally at that level in trying to make that ceasefire work, there is a strong chance that that will take place,” he said. So far, the agreement that went into force mid-day on Sunday was broadly holding, he added.

He also struck a positive note on ceasefire talks in the Kazakh capital Astana last week, which failed to agree on a monitoring mechanism for a Russian-Iranian-Turkish de-escalation deal but produced a lot of work “in the right direction”.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was in Turkey discussing a particular problem area on Monday, the rebel-held town of Idlib in Syria, de Mistura said, adding that it was a deal that “could almost have been announced”.

The world was perhaps witnessing the simplifying phase of the most complex conflict of our time, the veteran mediator said, adding that de-escalation of the war must be an interim phase and not undermine Syria’s territorial integrity. It should lead rapidly to a stabilisation phase, he said.

“This could become very much a priority anyway just after the liberation of Raqqa,” de Mistura said, referring to the Islamic State stronghold in northeastern Syria.

Asked if the war was ending after almost six and a half years and hundreds of thousands of deaths, de Mistura said several stars were aligning – on the ground, regionally and internationally.

“In that sense … there is a higher potential than we are seeing in the past for progress.”

De Mistura said he was not expecting breakthroughs in this week’s talks, but he had had a working lunch with the heads of the three rival opposition delegations, and he hoped that they could work together more.

In six rounds of talks since early 2016, the fractured opposition has never united in one delegation, meaning that de Mistura cannot hold face-to-face talks between the Syrian government and a single, united opposition delegation.

 

(Reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay, editing by Larry King)

 

At least 23 Egyptian soldiers killed in deadliest Sinai attack in years

By Ahmed Mohamed Hassan and Yusri Mohamed

CAIRO/ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) – At least 23 Egyptian soldiers were killed when suicide car bombs tore through two military checkpoints in North Sinai on Friday, security sources said, an attack claimed by Islamic State that marks one of the bloodiest assaults on security forces in years.

Islamic State militants are waging an insurgency in the rugged, thinly populated Sinai Peninsula. They have killed hundreds of soldiers and police since 2013, when the military ousted Islamist President Mohamed Mursi after mass protests against his rule.

The two cars blew up at two checkpoints outside of a military compound just south of Rafah, on the border with the Gaza Strip, the security sources said.

In a statement Islamic State said its fighters targeted the compound because the military was preparing to launch operations against the Sunni Muslim militant group from there.

The security sources said another 26 soldiers were injured in Friday’s attacks. The military put the casualties lower, saying the attacks had killed and injured a total of 26 soldiers, without providing a breakdown of the figure.

The attack is the most severe in Sinai since at least July 2015, when Islamic State militants assaulted simultaneously a slew of checkpoints and military sites around North Sinai. At least 17 soldiers were killed, according to an official tally.

Friday’s bombings present a challenge for general-turned-president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who describes Islamist militancy as an existential threat and himself as a bulwark against extremism in a region beset by violence and war.

COUNTER-STRIKE

Security sources described Friday’s attack as a coordinated strike, with car bombs blowing apart checkpoints as gunmen in four-wheel drive vehicles shot down soldiers running for cover.

Militants in armored vehicles meanwhile fired rocket propelled grenades at a military site just beyond the checkpoint, the sources said.

The military carried out a counter-attack almost immediately after, deploying fighter jets to kill over 40 militants suspected of involvement and destroying six of their vehicles, according to a video released by the military showing aerial footage of air strikes.

The military posted photos of five dead militants in blood-soaked fatigues lying in the sand. It did not name their affiliation.

“Law enforcement forces in North Sinai succeeded in thwarting a terrorist attack on some checkpoints south of Rafah,” a military statement said.

The bloody assault comes as militant attacks have increasingly shifted beyond the Sinai deep into Egypt’s heartland, often targeting minority Coptic Christians.

Separately on Friday, a homeland security officer was shot dead outside his home in Qalubiya, a province just north of Cairo, while on his way to Friday prayers, an Interior Ministry statement said.

That attack was later claimed by the Hasam Movement, a militant group that has claimed several attacks around Cairo targeting judges and policemen since last year.

Responding to the Sinai attack, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail stressed the need for countries to unite against those who support terrorism and to “dry up their sources of funding,” an allusion to Qatar.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain broke diplomatic relations with Qatar last month and are now boycotting the Gulf Arab state, which they accuse of supporting terrorism and allying with regional foe Iran. Qatar denies this.

(Reporting by Ahmed Mohamed Hassan and Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia; Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy, Ali Abdelaty, and Ahmed Tolba in Cairo; Writing by Eric Knecht; Editing by Larry King and Chris Reese)

Facing defeat in Mosul, Islamic State mounts diversionary attack to the south

Members of Iraqi federal police carry their weapons during fighting with Islamic State militants in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Ahmed Saad

MOSUL/TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) – Islamic State militants attacked a village south of Mosul, killing several people including two journalists, even as they were about to lose their last redoubt in the city to an Iraqi military onslaught, security sources said on Friday.

The assault on Imam Gharbi village appeared to be the sort of diversionary, guerrilla-style strike tactics Islamic State is expected to focus on as U.S.-backed Iraqi forces regain control over cities IS captured in a shock 2014 offensive.

Security sources said IS insurgents had infiltrated Imam Gharbi, some 70 km (44 miles) south of Mosul on the western bank of the Tigris river, on Wednesday evening from a pocket of territory still under their control on the eastern bank.

Two Iraqi journalists were reported killed and two others wounded as they covered the security forces’ counter-attack to take back the village on Friday. An unknown number of civilians and military were also killed or wounded in the clashes.

In Mosul, IS clung to a slowly shrinking pocket on the Tigris west bank, battling for every meter with snipers, grenades and suicide bombers, forcing security forces to fight house-to-house in densely-populated blocks.

The Iraqi military has forecast final victory this week in what used to be the de facto capital of IS’s “caliphate” in Iraq, after a grinding eight-month, U.S.-backed offensive to wrest back the city, whose pre-war population was 2 million.

But security forces faced ferocious resistance from roughly several hundred militants hunkered down among thousands of civilians in the maze of alleyways in Mosul’s Old City.

Air strikes and artillery salvoes continued to pound Islamic State’s last Mosul bastion on Friday, a Reuters TV crew said.

Mosul was by far the largest city seized by Islamic State in its offensive three years ago where the ultra-hardline group declared its “caliphate” over adjoining parts of Iraq and Syria.

ASYMMETRIC ATTACKS

Stripped of Mosul, IS’s dominion in Iraq will be reduced to mainly rural, desert areas west and south of the city where tens of thousands of people live, and the militants are expected to keep up asymmetric attacks on selected targets across Iraq.

Adhel Abu Ragheef, a Baghdad-based expert on jihadist groups, said Islamic State was likely to carry out “more of these raid-type attacks on security forces to try to divert them away from the main battle”, now in Mosul and then in other areas west of Mosul including near the Syrian border still IS control.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the end of Islamic State’s “state of falsehood” a week ago, after security forces took Mosul’s mediaeval Grand al-Nuri mosque – although only after retreating militants blew it up.

Months of grinding urban warfare in Mosul have displaced 900,000 people, about half the city’s pre-war population, and killed thousands, according to aid organizations.

The United Nations predicts it will cost more than $1 billion to repair basic infrastructure in Mosul. Iraq’s regional Kurdish leader said on Thursday in a Reuters interview that the Baghdad central government had failed to prepare a post-battle political, security and governance plan.

The offensive has damaged thousands of structures in Mosul’s Old City and destroyed nearly 500 buildings, satellite imagery released by the United Nations on Thursday showed.

In some of the worst affected areas, almost no buildings appear to have escaped damage, and Mosul’s dense construction means the extent of the devastation might be underestimated, U.N. officials said.

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Outbreak of hantavirus infections kills three in Washington state

A micrographic study of liver tissue seen from a Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) patient seen in this undated photo obtained by Reuters, July 6, 2017. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Handout via REUTERS

By Laura Zuckerman

(Reuters) – Five people have been stricken with the rare, rodent-borne hantavirus illness in Washington state since February, three of whom have died, in the state’s worst outbreak of the disease in at least 18 years, public health officials reported on Thursday.

The three fatal cases also mark the highest death toll from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in Washington state during a single year since the respiratory ailment was first identified in the “Four Corners” region of the U.S. Southwest in 1993.

The disease has been found to be transmitted to humans from deer mice, either through contact with urine, droppings, saliva or nesting materials of infected rodents or by inhaling dust contaminated with the virus.

Victims in the latest outbreak were men and women ranging in age from their 20s to their 50s from four counties across the state, said David Johnson, spokesman for the Washington State Department of Health.

The first diagnosed case this year was in February and the most recent was last month, when the infection killed a resident of Spokane County in the eastern part of the state near Washington’s border with Idaho. Three of the five cases, including another one that proved fatal, were confirmed in the Puget Sound region of King and Skagit counties.

The only common factor among those infected by the disease, which typically kills more than a third of its victims, is that they were all exposed to infected mice, Johnson said.

The last time five confirmed hantavirus cases were diagnosed in Washington state in a single year was in 1999, although just one of those proved fatal, Johnson said.

Washington has reported 49 of the 690 hantavirus cases tallied nationwide from 1993 to January 2016, ranking fifth among 10 Western states that account for the bulk of all documented infections, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

Eighteen infections with four deaths were reported nationally in 2015. The year before, the CDC counted 35 cases, of which 14 were fatal.

The most highly publicized hantavirus outbreak occurred in 2012, when 10 visitors to Yosemite National Park in California were diagnosed with the infection, three of whom died, prompting a worldwide alert. All but one of those were linked to tent cabins later found to have been infested by deer mice.

(Editing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Paul Tait)

One dead as strong earthquake hits Philippines

MANILA (Reuters) – A strong earthquake struck the central Philippines on Thursday killing at least one person and damaging several houses and some infrastructure, officials said.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) said aftershocks were expected but ruled out any tsunami following the earthquake of magnitude 6.5 that rocked the towns of Jaro and Kananga in Leyte province.

Congresswoman Lucy Torres-Gomez from the province said one person had been confirmed killed and Kananga had been “badly hit”.

“There were cracks on the roads and in some areas landslides have been reported,” she told ANC News Channel, adding that a building also collapsed.

“The aftershocks are still quite strong.”

The U.S. Geological Survey said earlier the quake had a magnitude of 6.9 and struck southwest of Tacloban City, one of the areas hardest hit by a typhoon in 2013.

Tacloban’s mayor, Cristina Romualdez, said she received no reports of casualty or damage in her area.

(Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz; Editing by Robert Birsel)

New York City police officer killed in `unprovoked attack,’ police say

Black and blue bunting hangs from above the entrance to the New York City Police Department's 46th precinct after a gunman fatally shot a female New York City Police Department officer in an unprovoked attack early on Wednesday in the city's Bronx borough of New York City, U.S., July 5, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Segar

By Barbara Goldberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A gunman fatally shot a female New York City police officer in an unprovoked attack early on Wednesday in the city’s Bronx borough, then was himself shot dead by police as he ran from the scene, authorities said.

The officer, Miosotis Familia, 48, a 12-year veteran of the force, was shot as she sat in a mobile command truck with her partner at about 12:30 a.m. EDT (0430 GMT), the New York Police Department said.

The suspect fired through the vehicle’s window, hitting Familia in the head, police said.

“It is clear that this was an unprovoked attack on police officers who were assigned to keep the people of this great city safe,” Police Commissioner James O’Neill told a news conference outside Saint Barnabas Hospital, where Familia was later pronounced dead.

“She was on duty serving this city, protecting people, doing what she believed in, and doing the job she loved,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the news conference.

A New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer places a candle outside the 46th police precinct after a gunman fatally shot a female New York City police officer in an unprovoked attack early on Wednesday in the city's Bronx borough of New York City, U.S., July 5, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Segar

A New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer places a candle outside the 46th police precinct after a gunman fatally shot a female New York City police officer in an unprovoked attack early on Wednesday in the city’s Bronx borough of New York City, U.S., July 5, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Segar

The suspect, Alexander Bonds, 34, of the Bronx borough, was on parole for robbery in Syracuse, New York, according to a police source.

The mobile command unit has been located since March in the area because of a rash of gang-related shootings, O’Neill said.

Police officers lined the street outside the hospital and saluted as an ambulance drove her body to New York’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner, police said.

Officers chased the assailant on foot for a block before he drew a revolver and they shot and killed him, police said.

A bystander was also shot and was in stable condition, police said.

Pat Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, urged the public to assist. “We need your help to watch our backs as we watch yours,” he said at the news conference.

A total of 24 U.S. law enforcement officers have been killed by gunfire so far this year, a 20 percent increase from the same period in 2016.

Familia is the eighth New York City police officer shot and killed in the line of duty over the last five years.

Her shooting was a chilling reminder of the December 2014 ambush of two New York City police officers who were slain as they sat in a patrol car in Brooklyn by a man who traveled to the city from Baltimore after pledging to kill officers.

The deaths of the two officers stoked tensions between City Hall, the police department and reform-minded protesters who had voted de Blasio into office, turning out in large numbers.

In 2014, 126 law enforcement officers died in the line of duty in the United States.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Larry King and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Mexican gunfight that killed 17 raises relatives’ fears of police executions

Joel Ernesto Soto, head of the Mazatlan municipal police, speaks during a news conference in Mazatlan, Mexico, July 3, 2017. REUTERS/Jesus Bustamante

By Lizbeth Diaz

MAZATLAN, Mexico (Reuters) – Relatives of 17 suspected gang members killed late last week by police in northwest Mexico fear a skewed death toll points to what has become a grimly regular complaint in recent years – summary executions by security forces.

The 17 men, who authorities said were armed with 24 guns, were killed by police near the coastal city of Mazatlan in the unruly state of Sinaloa on Friday night. Another two people died nearby in what appeared to be earlier, related shootings, the state attorney general’s office said.

None of the suspects in the gun battle were found wounded or arrested.

Genaro Robles, Sinaloa’s head of police, put the outcome down to his officers’ better training and said there was no use of excessive force or extrajudicial killing in the exchange. Five of the 11 police involved suffered gunshot wounds. None died.

However, for relatives of the dead, the events raised the suspicion they were victims of a heavy-handed response by security forces of the kind that has stained Mexico’s human rights record in recent years.

Three people told Reuters they believed their relatives were killed in cold blood. Two of them cited gunshot wounds they said they had seen in the backs of their loved ones as evidence.

“They murdered them,” said the sister of one of the dead men as she waited outside a funeral home in Mazatlan. She declined to give her name for fear of reprisals. “They didn’t have a chance. This wasn’t a gun battle like they say in the news.”

Local municipal police also rejected the allegation, though human rights officials are investigating possible abuses.

Drug smugglers have been scrapping for control of the state amid a power vacuum following the deportation of iconic Sinaloa-native, drug boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Police chief Robles said officers were alerted to two people injured behind a mall in the small town of Villa Union on Friday evening, and chased down the suspected assailants, sparking a gun battle on a road outside town.

Blood was visible on the road when Reuters visited the scene at the weekend.

Nightime footage posted on social media afterwards purporting to show victims of the event, showed bodies piled up in the back of pickup trucks, with more scattered along a road. Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the videos.

The nephew of one of the victims said his uncle had worked for a drug cartel and had been shot from behind. “When I saw my uncle’s body it had gunshots in the back,” said the man, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

One local policeman described the shootings as “butchery” and unlike another recent gun-battle he had seen. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

STATE PROBE

Miriam Hernandez of the Sinaloa state Commission for Human Rights said the organization had opened an investigation into whether the killings involved human rights abuses.

Joel Ernesto Soto, head of the municipal police in Mazatlan, whose men fought in the gun battle, said he welcomed the probe.

“They can come and ask and speak to us. We’ll be here waiting,” he said, referring to the commission. “This event was completely fortuitous; there was nothing untoward.”

In 2015, police executed nearly two dozen suspected gang members in an ambush near the western town of Tanhuato, the national human rights commission found. It was one of the worst abuses by security forces in a decade of drug violence.

That followed another notorious incident in 2014 when 22 suspected cartel henchmen were killed by soldiers in Tlatlaya, a town a couple of hours southwest of Mexico City. Many of the soldiers were later acquitted of murder.

Police killed 17 people for every officer lost in gun battles in 2014, a study by Mexico’s National Autonomous University found. Experts said that ratio was consistent with excessive use of force.

Violence has risen sharply in Sinaloa since kingpin Guzman was sent to the United States in January, as splits within his once-dominant Sinaloa Cartel and attacks from rival gangs fed a killing spree.

There were 619 murders in Sinaloa in the first five months of 2017, up more than 75 percent from the same period in 2016.

“Everything is disintegrating,” policeman Soto said.

The family members gathered outside the Mazatlan funeral home said the rising violence was making police more corrupt.

“These killings were dirty,” said the mother of one of the victims, who also declined to give her name. “This wasn’t a fight. It was something else, but what can you do?”

(Writing by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Dave Graham and Lisa Shumaker)

Yemen’s cholera death toll rises to 1,500: WHO

FILE PHOTO: Women sit with relatives infected with cholera at a hospital in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, Yemen May 14, 2017. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

ADEN (Reuters) – The death toll from a major cholera outbreak in Yemen has risen to 1,500, Nevio Zagaria, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) representative in Yemen, said on Saturday, and appealed for more help to put an end to the epidemic.

Yemen has been devastated by a 27-month war between a Saudi-led coalition and the armed Iran-aligned Houthi group, making it a breeding ground for the disease, which spreads by faeces getting into food or water and thrives in places with poor sanitation.

Speaking at a joint news conference with representatives of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank, Zagaria said that had been some 246,000 suspected cases in the period to June 30.

The WHO said this week that the outbreak had reached the halfway mark at 218,798 cases as a massive emergency response has begun to curb its spread two months into the epidemic.

Although most of Yemen’s health infrastructure has broken down and health workers have not been paid for more than six months, the WHO is paying “incentives” to doctors, nurses, cleaners and paramedics to staff an emergency cholera network.

With funding help from the World Bank, the WHO is setting up treatment centers with 50-60 beds each, overseen by shifts of about 14 staff working around the clock. The aim is to reach 5,000 beds in total.

(Reporting by Mohammed Mukhashaf, writing by Sami Aboudi; editing by Jason Neely)

Tour bus bursts into flames after collision in Germany; 18 killed

Helicopters at the site where a coach burst into flames after colliding with a lorry on a motorway near Muenchberg, Germany

BERLIN (Reuters) – Eighteen people were killed when a tour bus burst into flames after colliding with a truck on a motorway in the German state of Bavaria on Monday, police said.

Thirty people were injured, some seriously, in the crash, which occurred shortly after 7 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) near the town of Stammbach, around 90 km (56 miles) northeast of Nuremberg, police said. The cause was unclear.

“It’s clear now that all 18 of the missing people on the bus died in the accident,” police said on Twitter.

Forty-eight people were on the bus. They were between 41 and 81 years old and most were from the eastern state of Saxony, police said.

The identities of some passengers had yet to be established, but police do not think foreigners were among the passengers, spokeswoman Irene Brandenstein said. The truck driver was not injured, she added.

Speaking at the scene of the crash, Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt said two people were in a critical condition.

“The heat’s development must have been intense, because there is nothing flammable left on the bus. Only steel parts are recognizable, so you can understand what that meant for the people in this bus,” he said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel described the crash as “terrible” and said: “Our thoughts are with the victims’ relatives and we wish all of the injured a quick recovery, from the bottom of our hearts.”

 

(Reporting by Michelle Martin; additional reporting by Reuters Television; Editing by Larry King)

 

Gunman kills doctor, wounds six others in Bronx hospital rampage

Police vehicles line the streets outside the hospital after an incident in which a gunman fired shots inside the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital in New York City, U.S. June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan Mcdermid

By Laila Kearney and Melissa Fares

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A doctor who had lost his job at a New York City hospital opened fire with an assault rifle inside the building on Friday, killing another physician and wounding six other people before taking his own life in a burst of apparent workplace-related violence, officials said.

The gunman, wearing a white medical lab coat, stalked two floors of the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, in the New York borough of the Bronx, and tried to set himself on fire before police searching the building found him dead of a self-inflicted gunshot, Police Commissioner James O’Neill said.

One female physician was shot to death, and six other people were wounded, five seriously, including one who was shot in the leg, O’Neill said at a news conference.

Mayor Bill de Blasio characterized the shooting as an “isolated incident” that appeared to be “a workplace-related matter.” He said that it was “not an act of terrorism.”

“One doctor is dead, and there are several doctors who are fighting for their lives right now amongst those who are wounded,” de Blasio told reporters. “This is a horrific situation unfolding in the middle of a place that people associate with care and comfort.”

O’Neill said the gunman was armed with an assault rifle.

Neither the mayor nor police immediately identified the suspect or any of the victims. O’Neill said the gunman was a former employee of the 972-bed hospital.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, in an interview with WABC News, identified the gunman as Dr. Henry Bello and said he had been fired by the hospital. Other media reports said Bello was 45 years of age.

The New York Times and the New York Daily News reported, citing unnamed sources, that Bello had resigned from the hospital rather than face termination over accusations of sexual harassment.

NYPD officers work outside Bronx-Lebanon Hospital, after an incident in which a gunman fired shots inside the hospital in New York City, U.S. June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

NYPD officers work outside Bronx-Lebanon Hospital, after an incident in which a gunman fired shots inside the hospital in New York City, U.S. June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

FROM NIGERIA TO CARIBBEAN MEDICAL SCHOOL

Bello had received a limited permit to practice as an international medical graduate in order to gain experience so he could be fully licensed, but that permit expired a year ago, the Times reported. It said he also had a pharmacy technician license from California. The Daily News said he had been a pharmacy tech at the hospital before he quit in 2015.

A native of Nigeria, Bello earned a medical degree from Ross University on the Caribbean island nation of Dominica and later worked briefly as a pharmacy technician for Metropolitan Hospital Center in Manhattan in 2012, according to David Wims, a lawyer who represented Bello in an unemployment insurance claim against that hospital.

In a telephone interview, Wims told Reuters Bello was injured on the job at Metropolitan a few months after being hired, then went on leave and never returned. In a decision upheld by the state’s appellate court division, Bello ultimately was denied unemployment benefits on grounds he quit without good cause.

Wims said he remembered Bello as “an even-keeled, respectful, humble person” and knew nothing of his history at the Bronx hospital.

Details about the shooting were still sketchy.

Authorities said the rampage unfolded shortly before 3 p.m. when the gunman went on a rampage on the 16th and 17th floors of the hospital. He and the slain physician both were found on the 17th floor, while the six other victims were found on the 16th floor, O’Neill said.

The incident sent waves of panic throughout the hospital, and police swarmed the building searching for the gunman.

“People were running. People were afraid,” said Jane Vachara, 50, a clerical associate on the ninth floor, who said she huddled with colleagues in a locker room for about an hour.

Adding to the pandemonium was the gunman’s attempt to set himself ablaze, which apparently triggered the hospital’s fire alarm system and halted elevator service, hampering efforts by first responders to reach victims and evacuate the building.

One ambulance worker, Robert Maldonado, told WCBS television that he and his partner had to carry a bleeding patient down nine flights of stairs to safety, applying pressure to the man’s wound on the way down.

Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, located about one mile (1.6 km) north of Yankee Stadium, is the largest voluntary, non-profit health care system serving the South and Central Bronx, as well as one of the city’s biggest providers of outpatient services.

(Additional reporting by Peter Szekely; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Mary Milliken and Stephen Coates)