Tag Archives: Death

Afghan officials probe attacks as death toll rises to at least 50

Afghan worker removing debris from suicide attack

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan security officials began investigating Tuesday’s attacks in the capital Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar as the death toll climbed to at least 50.

The Ministry of Public Health raised the death toll from the Kabul attack to 37, with 98 wounded, while 13 people were confirmed dead in Kandahar. One security official said the death toll from the Kabul incident alone could reach as high as 45-50 with more than 100 wounded.

The violence highlights the precarious security situation in Afghanistan, which has seen a steady increase in attacks since international troops ended combat operations in 2014, with record numbers of civilian casualties.

Many of the Kabul victims were workers in parliamentary offices who were returning home in the afternoon rush hour or first responders hit when they were attending victims of an initial blast.

The Taliban, seeking to reimpose Islamic law after their 2001 ouster, claimed responsibility for the attack, which they said targeted a minibus carrying personnel from the National Directorate for Security, Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency.

But they denied responsibility for the attack in Kandahar which killed mainly government officials or diplomats from the United Arab Emirates who were visiting the city to open an orphanage.

President Ashraf Ghani’s National security adviser, Hanif Atmar, travelled to Kandahar on Wednesday to launch an investigation. Five Emirati officials as well as the deputy governor of Kandahar, Abdul Shamsi, and a number of other senior officials were among the dead.

No claim of responsibility has been made for the attack, set off by a bomb hidden under sofas in the residence of the provincial governor.

However Kandahar police chief Abdul Razeq, a feared commander who was in the compound when the explosion occurred but who escaped injury, accused Pakistan’s intelligence services and the Haqqani network, a militant group linked to the Taliban.

He said workers may have smuggled in the explosives used in the attack during construction work and said a number of people had been held for questioning.

The United Nations condemned the “unprincipled, unlawful and deplorable attacks” which it said would make peace more difficult to achieve.

“Those responsible for these attacks must be held accountable,” said Pernille Kardel, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan.

On the same day as the two attacks, seven people were killed in a Taliban attack on a security unit in the southern province of Helmand.

(Reporting by Mirwais Harooni and Hamid Shalizi, writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Nick Macfie)

U.S. police say black killings, protests raised tensions: survey

NYPD Couterterrorism unit

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Three quarters of American police officers said their interactions with black people have become more tense following police killings of unarmed black men and waves of protests that followed, according to a survey published on Wednesday.

The Pew Research Center survey found a widespread feeling among police that the general public misunderstood them and the public outcry over the deaths in recent years was motivated by anti-police bias rather than a will to hold police accountable.

Police killings of several unarmed black men in 2014 led to nationwide protests and the rise of the grassroots movement known as Black Lives Matter.

Supporters of the movement, including some Democrats, have said it shines a light on a previously overlooked problem of excessive use of force against blacks by police. Critics, including President-elect Donald Trump and other Republicans, have criticized Black Lives Matter as unfairly maligning police doing a dangerous job.

“Within America’s police and sheriff’s departments, the survey finds that the ramifications of these deadly encounters have been less visible than the public protests, but no less profound,” the researchers wrote in a report accompanying the survey results.

Seventy five percent of officers told Pew their interactions with black people had become more tense in the wake of high-profile police killings of blacks and the protests they generated. Two thirds of officers said the protests were motivated “a great deal” by a general bias towards police.

Two thirds of officers saw the killings of unarmed black men as isolated incidents rather than a sign of a broader problem. This was in marked contrast to the sentiment of the general public, 60 percent of whom said in a separate Pew survey the killings pointed to a broader systemic problem.

More than ninety percent of American police officers said they worried more about their safety because of the protests. About three quarters said they or their colleagues were less willing to stop and question people who seemed suspicious or to use force even when appropriate.

Majorities of police officers and the general public supported the wider use of body cameras worn by officers to record interactions, at 66 percent and 93 percent respectively.

Pew based its findings on online surveys with 7,917 officers from 54 police and sheriff’s departments between May 19 and August 14 last year. There is no single margin of error for the results because of the complex, multi-stage way Pew arrived at its sample of police officers, Pew said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Andrew Hay)

Taliban attack near Afghan parliament kills more than 20

Afghan policement at site of suicide bombing

KABUL (Reuters) – A Taliban suicide attack in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday killed more than 20 people and wounded at least 20 others, as twin blasts near parliament offices hit a crowded area during the afternoon rush hour.

Saleem Rasouli, a senior public health official, said 23 people had been killed and more than 20 wounded in the attack on the Darul Aman road, near an annexe to the new Indian-financed parliament building.

Another official put the death toll at 21 but said more than 45 had been wounded in the worst attack Kabul has seen in weeks.

The Islamist militant Afghan Taliban movement, which immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, said its target had been a minibus carrying staff from the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency. It put casualties at around 70.

Officials said a suicide bomber blew himself up in the Darul Aman area, and was followed almost immediately by a car bomber in an apparently coordinated operation.

Earlier on Tuesday, a suicide bomber killed seven people and wounded nine when he detonated his explosives in a house in the southern province of Helmand used by an NDS unit.

Thousands of civilians have been killed in Afghanistan in the 15 years since the Taliban government was brought down in the U.S.-led campaign of 2001.

In July, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan reported that 1,601 civilians had been killed in the first half of the year, a record since it began collating figures in 2009.

(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by James Mackenzie and Mike Collett-White)

Thai floods cause 200-kilometer traffic tailback; death toll up to 25

Bridge damaged by floods in Thailand

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Flash floods in southern Thailand washed out a bridge on the country’s main north-south highway on Tuesday, backing up traffic for 200 km (125 miles) as the death toll from days of unseasonable rain rose to 25, media reported.

More than 360,000 households, or about a million people, have been affected by the floods that have damaged homes and schools and affected rubber and palm oil production, the Department of Disaster Prevention and industry officials said.

Television pictures showed abandoned cars submerged in murky waters in Prachuap Khiri Khan province where a torrent washed out a bride on the main road linking Bangkok to the south, causing the 200 km tailback, media reported.

The railway link to the south, and Malaysia, beyond has been severed for days.

Thailand’s rainy season usually ends in late November but this year heavy rain has fallen well into what should be the dry season.

Southern Thailand is a major rubber-producing area and the wet weather has hit production. Palm oil plantations have also been flooded, industry officials and farmers’ groups said.

In Nakhon Si Thammarat, one of the worst-hit provinces, television footage showed villagers commuting by boat.

“It’s like a big pond,” said resident Pattama Narai.

Nakhon Si Thammarat has had 493 mm of rain in the past seven days, 426 mm more than the average for this time of year, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Flooding regularly occurs in the May-November rainy season.

In 2011, widespread flooding that began in the north and flowed down to Bangkok crippled industry, killed more than 900 people and slowed economic growth to just 0.1 percent that year.

(Reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre, Juarawee Kittisilpa and Jutarat Skulpichetrat; Editing by Robert Birsel; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Powerful storms head for U.S. West after thousands flee floods

Partially submerged building in California

(Reuters) – Powerful storms packing heavy rain and snow will lash the U.S. West on Tuesday, a day after thousands of people fled their homes to escape floods, forecasters said.

A band of heavy downpours will drench northern California and heavy snow will fall in the Sierra Nevada mountains into Wednesday, exacerbating the threat of flooding, the National Weather Service said.

The storms are part of weather system called the “Pineapple Express” that has soaked a vast area from Hawaii to the typically drought-prone states of California and Nevada.

Just north of San Francisco, the Russian River in Sonoma County flooded early on Monday, forcing the evacuation of more than 3,000 residents, officials said.

In Nevada, residents of about 400 homes in Reno were ordered to leave as rains swelled the Truckee River, which flows through the city, a county official said.

A woman died after she was struck by a falling tree in the San Francisco area, local officials and media reported.

Over the weekend, an ancient giant sequoia tree with a hollowed-out tunnel was toppled by floods in Calaveras Big Trees State Park just southeast of Sacramento.

California’s Napa Valley vinyards largely escaped undamaged and the rain was expected to replenish water supplies after five years of drought, said Patsy McGaughy, Napa Valley Vintners spokeswoman.

California officially remains in a state of drought as water is still scarce in the south.

But northern California’s Lake Oroville, the principal reservoir for the State Water Project, has 2.25 million acre feet of water, more than double the amount it had a year ago, Michael Anderson, state climatologist for the California Department of Water Resources, said.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee)

Unclear whether truck attack in Israel inspired by Islamic State

Relatives and friends mourn the death of 4 Israeli soldiers

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s government has been quick to suggest a Palestinian who rammed a truck into a group of Israeli soldiers at the weekend was inspired by Islamic State, raising questions over how it came to that conclusion.

Hours after the attack on Sunday, which killed four soldiers and wounded 17, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the assailant showed all the signs of being a supporter of the ultra-hardline Sunni movement.

He did not give details but Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman cited parallels with Islamic State-inspired attacks on crowds using trucks in Germany and France last year.

“We saw it in France, we saw it in Berlin and unfortunately we saw it today in Jerusalem,” he said during a visit to the scene overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City.

In Israel, multiple voices were quick to point out the differences between Palestinian violence and that perpetrated by Islamic State. While Islam may inspire some Palestinian assailants, political motivations around Israel’s occupation and the long-running conflict remain the dominant factor.

“Palestinian attacks are overwhelmingly motivated by nationalism, not by religion,” said Orit Perlov, a social media expert and research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

“Israel is trying to generalize the phenomenon, saying everyone faces the same threat. But while the symptoms may be similar, the causes are completely different.”

In Europe there is sympathy and support for Israel and the deadly threats it faces, but also cautiousness about close comparisons.

Over the past 18 months, Netanyahu has repeatedly described a wave of Palestinian attacks on Israelis as part of the same violent Islamist campaign afflicting Europe, saying Israel, France and Germany are in the same boat, and that Israel’s frontline position needs to be better understood.

“They might have different names — ISIS, Boko Haram, Hamas, Al Shabab, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah — but all of them are driven by the same hatred and bloodthirsty fanaticism,” Netanyahu said in January last year. “We understand we are in a common battle for our values and a common battle for our future.”

Sunday’s statement was the clearest link Netanyahu had made between a Palestinian attacker and Islamic State, although he did not say the group planned it or that the assailant, who was shot dead at the scene, was an Islamic State operative.

Yossi Melman, an analyst writing in Ma’ariv newspaper, said there was little evidence to suggest the Palestinian attacker had drawn inspiration from Islamic State, pointing out that Palestinians carried out car-ramming attacks before ISIS.

“This is essentially a case of unaffiliated terrorists, young people … who do not belong to any organization and decide on their own, often on a whim and with no prior preparations, to commit a terror attack,” he said.

QUID PRO QUO?

Others said it made sense for Netanyahu to try to draw a direct link between the threats Israel faces and those in Europe, but that it was unlikely to convince policymakers.

“There are no signs that Europe as a whole will stop considering the occupation as the main cause for Palestinian terrorism,” said Ilan Jonas, chief executive of Prime Source, an Israeli political and security consultancy.

Europe is not about to “adopt Netanyahu’s line that this is part of a universal phenomenon that is totally unrelated to Israel’s policies in the West Bank,” he said.

As is common, Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, praised Sunday’s attack. But the Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was more circumspect. Its security forces even carried out raids in some areas, supporting Israel’s clampdown.

Adnan al-Dmairi, spokesman of the Palestinian security services in the West Bank, dismissed any suggestion Islamic State had a foothold in the territory.

“There is no presence for ISIS as an organization in the West Bank,” he told Reuters, while acknowledging some people expressed support on Facebook or other social media. “There is nothing of such a name as ISIS in the Palestinian areas.”

Data tends to back that up. Figures collected by Israel’s security establishment show Palestinian support for ISIS declining, said Perlov of the INSS, with the level falling from 14 percent in 2014-15 to eight percent last year.

“The trend is downwards. Even if there was some low-level support for IS at the peak when it seized control of Mosul, that has dropped away,” said Perlov.

Some Israeli Arabs — no more than a couple of dozen, analysts say — have tried to go and join Islamic State in Syria or Iraq, but that number is a fraction of the Muslims that have gone from Britain, Belgium, France or the Netherlands.

For Europe, Israel’s generalization of the terrorism threat presents a problem, said Andrea Frontini, an analyst at the European Policy Centre, because it risks over-politicizing counter-terrorism cooperation.

On the one hand, Europe needs and wants closer cooperation with Israel when it comes to tackling rising security threats, she said. But Europe does not want to feel like it has soften its approach on other issues, such as the Middle East peace process and Israel’s occupation, in order to show solidarity.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Writing by Luke Baker)

Gunman opens fire at Ft. Lauderdale airport, killing five

Travelers and airport workers evacuated at Ft. Lauderdale airport

By Zachary Fagenson

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Reuters) – A gunman wearing a “Star Wars” T-shirt opened fire at a baggage carousel at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday, killing five people before being taken into custody, officials and witnesses said.

Five people died and eight were wounded in the incident, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel told reporters at the airport.

The gunman had arrived on a flight from Canada with a checked gun in his bag, Broward County Commissioner Chip LaMarca said on Twitter. He claimed his bag and went to the bathroom to load the gun before coming out and firing, LaMarca said.

Cellphone video posted on social media showed victims on the floor next to a carousel, with people on their knees attempting to provide aid. At least two had pools of blood from apparent head wounds.

The shooter was unharmed as law enforcement officers never fired a shot, Israel said, adding that it was too early to assign a motive.

“At this point, it looks like he acted alone,” Israel said.

Nonetheless, he said “this scene is considered fluid and active” as police search the rest of the airport.

The shooter was identified as Esteban Santiago, 26, and had a U.S. military identification, according to a spokesman for U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who spoke with officials at the Transportation Security Administration.

The shooter, who said nothing as he fired, was wearing a “Star Wars” T-shirt, witnesses told MSNBC.

The Florida attack was the latest in a series of mass shootings that have plagued the United States in recent years, some inspired by militants with an extreme view of Islam, others carried out by loners or the mentally disturbed who have easy access to weapons under U.S. gun laws.

About 90 minutes after the attack, panic broke out anew with passengers and police running frantically about at a separate terminal, but Israel said there were no other reports of shots being fired.

One person was injured trying to evacuate, which may have triggered the later panic, Israel said. Dozens of police sprinted back and forth with automatic weapons drawn, and one officer screamed “Get down, get down!” from a nearby parking garage, a Reuters reporter witnessed.

John Schlicher, who told MSNBC he saw the attack, described the shooter as a slender man who was “directly firing at us” while passengers waited for their bags.

“I put my head down and prayed,” Schlicher said, adding that his wife gave first aid to someone who had been shot in the head. His mother-in-law used her sweater to tend to another victim but it turned out that person was already dead, he said.

The shooter reloaded for another burst of shooting, Schlicher said, but could not say how many bullets were fired.

Mark Lea, another eyewitness, told MSNBC “there was no rhyme or reason to it.”

“He didn’t say anything, he was quiet the whole time, he didn’t yell anything,” Lea said.

Security officials corralled passengers underneath jetways and on the runway apron, according to images on television.

Air traffic was temporarily suspended.

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is the second largest in South Florida, serving as an intercontinental gateway, with Miami International Airport known as the primary airport for international flights in the area.

HISTORY OF SHOOTINGS

Nearly two months ago a former Southwest Airlines worker killed an employee of the company at Oklahoma City’s airport in what police called a premeditated act.

The deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history took place last June, when a gunman apparently inspired by Islamic State killed 53 people and wounded 49 at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

One of the most shocking was in 2012, when a man entered an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and shot dead 20 first-graders and six adults.

Attackers have exploited security officials’ focus on preventing attacks on airplanes rather than inside airports. In Western Europe and the United States, terminals are easily accessible public spaces.

But at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, widely seen as a model for security, private companies trained by the national security agency use bomb-detectors, profile passengers and question travelers under the watch of police at the airport’s entrance. That may just shift the target to another location at the airport, experts have said, however.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins, Jeffrey Dastin, Joseph Ax, Jonathan Allen, Gina Cherelus, Letitia Stein and Laila Kearney; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by James Dalgleish)

At least five dead in Ft. Lauderdale airport shooting

Ft. Lauderdale Airport

By Zachary Fagenson

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Reuters) – A shooter wearing a Star Wars T-shirt opened fire at the baggage carousel at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday, killing at least five people before being taken into custody, officials and witnesses said.

Five people died and eight more were wounded in the incident, the local sheriff’s office said.

The shooter, who said nothing, appeared to be a man in his 20s wearing a Star Wars T-shirt who was shot by police as he attempted to reload, MSNBC reported, citing witnesses.

John Schlicher, who told MSNBC he saw the attack, described the shooter as a “slender man” who was “directly firing at us” while passengers waited for their bags to come off the carousel.

“I put my head down and prayed,” Schlicher said, adding that his wife gave first aid to someone who had been shot in the head.

His mother-in-law used her sweater to tend to another victim but it turned out that victim was already dead, Schlicher said.

The shooter reloaded once for a second burst of shooting, Schlicher said, but he could not say how many bullets were fired.

The shooting took place at the Terminal 2 baggage claim, said a post on the airport’s Twitter account.

Mark Lea, another eyewitness, told MSNBC “there was no rhyme or reason to it.”

“He didn’t say anything, he was quiet the whole time, he didn’t yell anything,” Lea said.

Security officials corralled passengers underneath jetways and on the runway apron, according to images on cable news networks.

Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary for U.S. President George W. Bush, said on Twitter shots were fired and “everyone is running.”

“All seems calm now but the police aren’t letting anyone out of the airport – at least not the area where I am,” he said.

A woman tended to a bleeding, seated man outside an airport building, according to a photo posted on Twitter by a Michigan information technology company.

The Broward Sheriff’s Office received a call at about 12:55 p.m. local time about shots fired at 100 Terminal Drive at the airport, the department wrote on Twitter.

All services were temporarily suspended, the airport’s Twitter feed said.

Florida Governor Rick Scott was traveling to Fort Lauderdale to be briefed by law enforcement, his office said in a statement.

The FBI’s Miami office was “aware of the situation” and in contact with local authorities, a spokesman said in an email. No further information was immediately available.

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is the second largest in South Florida, serving as an intercontinental gateway, with Miami International Airport known as the primary airport for international flights in the area.

Some 20 miles (30 km) north of Miami, the Fort Lauderdale airport is near cruise line terminals at Port Everglades.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins, Jonathan Allen, Gina Cherlus, Letitia Stein and Laila Kearney; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by JS Benkoe and James Dalgleish)

Quake rattles southern Iran, four Afghan laborers killed: TV

ANKARA (Reuters) – An earthquake shook Iran’s southern Fars province on Friday, killing four Afghan laborers and prompting a search operation for other casualties in the thinly-populated mountainous area, Iranian state TV said.

The shallow magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck at dawn, with its epicenter 53 km southwest (33 miles) of the city of Jahrom, the USGS said. Iranian media said the quake measured 5.1.

“Four Afghans living and working on a farm were killed … (in) Saifabad village near the town of Khonj,” state TV reported.

The governor of Fars province, Mokhtar Abbasi, told state TV that rescuers were searching the quake zone for any other victims in the sparsely populated region.

Three injured people from the village of Chartala were taken to hospital but later discharged, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Iran is criss-crossed by major fault lines and has suffered several devastating earthquakes in recent years, including a 6.6 magnitude quake in 2003 which flattened the southeastern city of Bam and killed more than 25,000 people.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; editing by Richard Lough)

Thai PM visits flood-battered south: six dead, transport disrupted

People in flood street in Thailand

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha visited flooded parts of the south of the country on Friday where unseasonable downpours have killed six people, cut road and rail links and forced an airport to close.

Thailand’s wet season usually ends in late November and heavy rain and flooding is rare in January, which is high season for beach resorts in the south.

Twenty-six flights to and from the main airport in the southern province of Nakhon Si Thammarat airport were canceled on Friday because the runway was flooded, the Department of Airports said.

“The floods began on January 1 and are due to the unseasonable heavy rain,” said an officer at the National Disaster Warning Center who declined to be identified as she is not authorized to speak to the media.

Six people had been killed in accidents caused by the flooding, she said.

Railway services on the main line linking Thailand to Malaysia have been suspended because the track is flooded.

Southern Thailand is a major rubber-producing region and the wet weather was having a significant impact on production, said Uthai Sonlucksub, president of the Natural Rubber Council of Thailand.

“Farmers began tapping in December because they had to wait for the rainy season to end but now they have to contend with the floods,” Uthai told Reuters.

Flooding in Thailand usually occurs during the May-November rainy season.

Widespread floods in 2011 killed more than 900 people and caused major disruption to industry, cutting economic growth that year to just 0.1 percent.

(Reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre, Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Robert Birsel)