Tag Archives: Death

Turkey detains 18 people over Izmir attack, sees PKK responsible: minister

Turkish police secure area after explosion

By Mehmet Emin Caliskan

IZMIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish police detained 18 people over a gun and bomb attack that killed two people in the city of Izmir and the justice minister said on Friday there was no doubt Kurdish militants were responsible.

Militants clashed with police and detonated a car bomb outside the main courthouse in Turkey’s third largest city, located on its western Aegean coast, on Thursday after their vehicle was stopped at a checkpoint. A police officer and a court employee were killed. Nine other people were wounded.

The incident again highlighted the deterioration in Turkey’s public security, coming soon after a gunman killed 39 New Year’s revelers inside a popular Istanbul nightclub. Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for that attack.

Authorities said it was clear from weapons seized by police that militants had planned a much bigger attack in Izmir but it was thwarted when security forces spotted their vehicle as it approached the courthouse.

Speaking on Friday at the funeral of the slain police officer, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said the two assailants, shot dead by police, had been identified and efforts were under way to find their accomplices. Police had detained 18 people.

“All the information we have obtained show it was the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) terrorist organization who gave instructions for the attack and that the terrorists were from the PKK,” he said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

On Friday, security police took up guard near the courthouse as hundreds of people filed in for the funeral. Thursday’s explosion shattered windows in a nearby cafeteria and scattered rubble across the steps to the courthouse entrance.

Hundreds in Izmir’s main Alsancak square protested over the attack, holding up banners that read, “We are not afraid.”

The PKK – designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and European Union – and its affiliates have been carrying out increasingly deadly attacks over the past year and a half, ever further from the largely Kurdish southeast, where they have waged an insurgency since 1984.

Izmir, a liberal city on Turkey’s Aegean seacoast, had largely escaped the PKK and Islamist militant violence that has scarred Istanbul and the capital Ankara in recent months.

Turkey, a NATO member, is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State militants in Syria.

(Writing by Daren Butler and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Two car bombs in Baghdad kill at least 14:sources

Iraqi security forces at the scene of car bomb

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Two car bombs in Baghdad killed at least 14 people on Thursday, police and medics said, part of a surge in violence across the capital at a time U.S.-backed forces try to drive Islamic State from the northern city of Mosul.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the first blast which went off in Baghdad’s eastern al-Obeidi area during the morning rush, killing six and wounding 15.

The ultra-hardline Sunni group said it had targeted a gathering of Shi’ite Muslims, whom it considers apostates.

The second explosion hit the central Baghdad district of Bab al-Moadham near a security checkpoint, killing eight. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Both bombs had been left in parked vehicles.

More than 60 people have been killed in Baghdad in attacks over the past week as Islamic State intensifies its campaign of violence in the capital as a 100,000-strong alliance of Iraqi forces extends its advances against the group in Mosul.

Mosul is Islamic State’s last major stronghold in the country. The group has lost most of the territory it seized in northern and western Iraq in 2014, and ceding Mosul would probably spell the end of its self-styled caliphate.

Lieutenant General Talib Shaghati, Iraq’s joint operations commander, told Reuters on Wednesday that pro-government troops had retaken about 70 percent of Mosul’s eastern districts since an offensive began on Oct. 17.

(Reporting by Saif Hameed; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Richard Lough)

Berlin truck attacker used at least 14 names: German police

Anis Amri suspect of Berlin Christmas market attack

By Joseph Nasr and Matthias Inverardi

BERLIN/DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) – The Tunisian man who killed 12 people last month by plowing a truck into a Berlin Christmas market had lived under at least 14 different names in Germany, a regional police chief said on Thursday, raising more questions about security lapses.

Anis Amri, shot dead by Italian police in Milan on Dec. 23, had been marked as a potential threat by authorities in the western federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW)in February 2016, some six months after he arrived in Germany and applied for asylum.

“He acted in a conspiratorial manner and used various personalities,” Dieter Schuermann, head of the NRW Criminal Police Unit, told the regional parliament during a briefing.

The 24-year-old divided his time between NRW and Berlin, where intelligence officials also classified him as a potential threat. But there was a consensus among security officials that he posed no concrete threat, Schuermann said.

An investigation into the attack is focusing on whether Amri had any accomplices.

Police arrested another Tunisian man in Berlin this week, who prosecutors say had dinner with Amri at an Arab restaurant in the capital one day before the attack on Dec. 19.

“INTENSIVE DISCUSSIONS”

A spokeswoman for the prosecution said on Wednesday that Amri and the arrested suspect, identified as 26-year-old Bilel A., had “very intensive discussions” at the restaurant on the eve of the attack.

The co-owner of the restaurant in north Berlin where the two allegedly met told Reuters on Thursday he had not been aware that Amri had dined at the premises until police came asking if they could have CCTV footage recorded on Dec. 18.

“No one who was here that night remembers seeing him,” said the co-owner, declining to give his name and requesting the eatery not be named.

“We are so busy we hardly have time to breathe. The police said he was here between 8 and 9 p.m.,” said the man, serving lunch as the restaurant began filling up.

At a shelter for migrants at the western end of Berlin where Bilel A. was arrested, refugees who said they knew Amri’s suspected accomplice said he had always told them he was Libyan.

“The strangest thing about him was that he used to pray every day but most evenings he would go out to nightclubs with his friends,” said Mohammad, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee who said he had shared a room at the shelter with Bilel A. six months ago before moving to another room at the facility.

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Germany detains Tunisian man linked to Berlin truck attacker

Police stand in front of the truck used in the Berlin Christmas Market Attack

BERLIN (Reuters) – German police have detained a 26-year-old Tunisian man over links with the perpetrator of an Islamist truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people, a federal prosecutors’ spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

Police on Tuesday evening searched the living quarters of the man identified as Bilel A. after he was found to have had dinner with Anis Amri a day before Amri steered a truck through the market on Dec. 19, spokeswoman Frauke Koehler said.

“This contact person is a 26-year-old Tunisian. We are investigating him for possible participation in the attack,” she told reporters.

Amri, 24, also a Tunisian and failed asylum seeker, was killed in a shootout with Italian police on Dec. 23 after fleeing Germany and traveling through the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for the Berlin attack.

Koehler said the investigation had shown Amri met the second Tunisian man in a restaurant in central Berlin on the eve of the attack and that the two engaged in “very intense discussions”.

“That triggered the suspicion for us that the suspect, this 26-year-old Tunisian, was possibly involved in the act, or at the very least knew of the attack plans of Anis Amri,” she said.

Koehler said there was insufficient evidence at this point to charge the man with any role in the Christmas market carnage, though had been previously investigated on suspicion of planning a violent attack.

Officials were evaluating communications devices seized during the raid of the man’s accommodations in a Berlin refugee center, and in the course of a second raid the same evening at the flat of another man who had contact with Amri.

In a separate statement, the Berlin state prosecutor’s office said it had detained the 26-year-old Tunisian on Tuesday for suspected social benefit fraud in three German cities.

A spokesman for the Berlin prosecutor’s office said Bilel A. had used at least two aliases, Ahmad H. and Abu M., and also claimed to be Egyptian. He was believed to have arrived in Germany in 2014 or perhaps earlier.

Berlin prosecutors in 2015 investigated whether the man had acquired explosives for an attack but dropped the inquiry in June last year for lack of evidence.

Koehler said Amri stared into a surveillance camera at a subway station near the Berlin zoo shortly after the Christmas market attack, and raised his index finger in a gesture sometimes seen in Islamic State propaganda videos.

She said forensic evidence showed that the Polish driver from whom Amri hijacked the truck was fatally shot while sitting in the passenger seat of the vehicle. The gun Amri used was the one found next to his body by police in Milan, Italy, she added.

Belgian prosecutors said on Wednesday Amri made a two-hour stopover at the Brussels North station on Dec. 21 after entering Belgium on a train from Amsterdam, before heading onwards to France.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Michael Nienaber in Berlin, Alissa de Carbonnel in Brussels; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Egypt arrests four in connection with church bombing, death toll rises

Egypt work on restoration of Cathedral

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian police have arrested four people in connection with the bombing that killed dozens of Christians at Cairo’s Coptic Christian cathedral last month, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.

At least 25 people, mostly women and children, were initially killed when a bomb exploded in a chapel adjoining St Mark’s Cathedral, the seat of the Coptic papacy. The Health Ministry said on Wednesday the death toll had climbed to 28.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said after the attack that the bomber was a man wearing a suicide vest and that security forces were seeking two more people believed to be involved.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement it had arrested one of the two along with three others who were part of the same cell and who planned to carry out more attack. One man is still on the run, it said, without saying when they were arrested.

Police also seized improvised explosive devices, shotguns, and ammunition with those it arrested, the ministry said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bombing and threatened more attacks against Christians but Egypt has sought to link the attack to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The ministry said in December that Mahmoud Shafik, the alleged bomber, was a supporter of the group. It said on Wednesday that one of the people it arrested was also a supporter of the Brotherhood but it did not mention if the others had any affiliation.

The Brotherhood has condemned the attack and accused Sisi’s administration of failing to protect the church. Sisi has dismissed the accusation.

Sisi took power in 2013, deposing Mohamed Mursi of the Brotherhood, and has since outlawed the group as part of a crackdown in which hundreds of its supporters have been killed and thousands jailed. An Islamist insurgency in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula has gained pace since and pledged allegiance to Islamic State in 2014.

Orthodox Copts, who comprise about 10 percent of Egypt’s 90 million people, are the Middle East’s largest Christian community.

(Reporting by Mostafa Hashem and Mahmoud Mourad; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Islamic State claims Istanbul attack, gunman remains at large

Flowers are placed outside the Reina nightclub by the Bosphorus, which was attacked by a gunman, in Istanbul, Turkey.

CAIRO/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Islamic State claimed responsibility on Monday for a New Year’s Day mass shooting in a packed Istanbul nightclub that killed 39 people, an attack carried out by a lone gunman who remains at large.

It described the Reina nightclub, where many foreigners as well as Turks were killed, as a gathering point for Christians celebrating their “apostate holiday”. The attack, it said, was revenge for Turkish military involvement in Syria.

“The apostate Turkish government should know that the blood of Muslims shed with airplanes and artillery fire will, with God’s permission, ignite a fire in their own land,” the Islamic State declaration said.

There was no immediate comment from Turkish officials.

The jihadist group has been blamed for at least half a dozen attacks on civilian targets in Turkey over the past 18 months but, other than targeted assassinations, this is the first time it has directly claimed any of them. It made the statement on one of its Telegram channels, a method used after attacks elsewhere.

NATO member Turkey is part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State and launched an incursion into neighboring Syria in August to drive the radical Sunni militants from its borders, sending in tanks and special forces backed by fighter jets.

Nationals of Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon, Libya, Israel, India, a Turkish-Belgian dual citizen and a Franco-Tunisian woman were among those killed at the exclusive nightclub on the shores of the Bosphorus waterway. Twenty-five of the dead were foreigners, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.

Police distributed a hazy black-and-white photo of the alleged gunman taken from security footage. State broadcaster TRT Haber said eight people had been detained in Istanbul.

The authorities believe the attacker may be from a Central Asian nation and suspect he had links to Islamic State, the Hurriyet newspaper said. It said he may be from the same cell responsible for a gun-and-bomb attack on Istanbul’s main airport in June, in which 45 people were killed and hundreds wounded.

The attack at Reina, popular with Turkish celebrities and wealthy visitors, shook Turkey as it tries to recover from a failed July coup and a series of deadly bombings in Istanbul and elsewhere, some blamed on Islamic State, others claimed by Kurdish militants.

Around 600 people were thought to be inside when the gunman shot dead a policeman and civilian at the door, forcing his way in then opening fire with an automatic assault rifle. Witnesses said he shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest).

Some at the club jumped into the Bosphorus after the attacker began shooting at random just over an hour into the new year. Witnesses described diving under tables as he walked around spraying bullets.

A woman reacts outside the Reina nightclub by the Bosphorus, which was attacked by a gunman, in Istanbul, Turkey,

A woman reacts outside the Reina nightclub by the Bosphorus, which was attacked by a gunman, in Istanbul, Turkey, January 2, 2017. REUTERS/Yagiz Karahan

KALASHNIKOV IN SUITCASE

The attacker was believed to have taken a taxi from the southern Zeytinburnu district of Istanbul and, because of the busy traffic, got out and walked the last four minutes to the entrance of the nightclub, newspaper Haberturk said.

He pulled his Kalashnikov rifle from a suitcase at the side of the road, opened fire on those at the door, then threw two hand grenades after entering, Haberturk said, without citing its sources. It said six empty magazines were found at the scene and that he was estimated to have fired at least 180 bullets.

Security services had been on alert across Europe for new year celebrations following an attack on a Christmas market in Berlin that killed 12 people. Only days ago, an online message from a pro-Islamic State group called for attacks by “lone wolves” on “celebrations, gatherings and clubs”.

In a statement hours after the shooting, President Tayyip Erdogan said such attacks aimed to create chaos and destabilize the country.

Four months into its operation in Syria, the Turkish army and the rebels it backs are besieging the Islamic State-held town of al-Bab. Erdogan has said he wants them to continue to Raqqa, the jihadists’ Syrian stronghold.

Turkey has also been cracking down on Islamic State networks at home. In counter-terrorism operations between Dec 26-Jan 2, Turkish police detained 147 people over links to the group and formally arrested 25 of them, the interior ministry said.

The New Year’s Day attack came five months after a failed military coup, in which more than 240 people were killed, many of them in Istanbul, as rogue soldiers commandeered tanks and fighter jets in a bid to seize power.

More than 100,000 people, including soldiers and police officers, have been sacked or suspended in a subsequent crackdown ordered by Erdogan, raising concern both about civic rights and the effectiveness of Turkey’s security apparatus.

The government says the purges will make the military, police and other institutions more disciplined and effective.

Turkey has seen repeated attacks in recent weeks. On Dec. 10, two bombs claimed by Kurdish militants exploded outside a soccer stadium in Istanbul, killing 44 people. A security guard who survived that attack was killed at Reina.

A car bomb killed at least 13 soldiers and wounded 56 when it ripped through a bus carrying off-duty military personnel in the central city of Kayseri a week later, an attack Erdogan also blamed on Kurdish militants.

Islamic State’s Amaq website said the group was behind a car bomb attack that killed 11 people and wounded 100 in the city of Diyarbakir in November, but Turkish authorities denied this and said Kurdish militants carried out the attack.

The Russian ambassador to Turkey was shot dead as he gave a speech in Ankara on Dec. 19 by an off-duty police officer who shouted “Don’t forget Aleppo” and “Allahu Akbar”.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein and Ahmed Tolba in Cairo; Editing by Giles Elgood and Ralph Boulton)

Islamic State claims suicide car bombs that killed at least 23 east of Mosul

A man wounded in a bomb attack in Kokjali, receives treatment at a hospital in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil,

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Islamic State claimed three suicide car bombs that killed at least 15 civilians and eight Iraqi policemen on Thursday in an eastern suburb of Mosul, according to a military statement.

The attacks targeted Kokjali, a suburb that the authorities said they had retaken from the jihadists almost two months ago.

A military spokesman said the car bombs went off in a market.

The U.S.-backed assault on Mosul, the jihadists’ last major stronghold in Iraq, was launched by a 100,000-strong alliance of local forces on Oct. 17. It has become the biggest military operation in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Islamic State militants retreating from the military offensive have repeatedly shelled areas after they are retaken by the army, killing or wounding scores of residents fleeing in the opposite direction.

Four Iraqi aid workers and at least seven civilians were killed by mortar fire this week during aid distribution in Mosul, the United Nations said on Thursday.

“People waiting for aid are already vulnerable and need help. They should be protected, not attacked,” said Lise Grande, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq.

“All parties to the conflict – all parties – have an obligation to uphold international humanitarian law and ensure that civilians survive and receive the assistance they need.”

Elite army forces have captured a quarter of the city but the advance has faced weeks of fierce counter-attacks from the militants.

The authorities do not release figures for civilian or military casualties, but medical officials say dozens of people are wounded each day in the battle for Mosul.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Fingerprints of Tunisian suspect in Berlin attack found on truck door

Flowers are seen near the scene where a truck ploughed into a crowded Christmas market in the German capital last night in Berlin, Germany,

By Michelle Martin and Michael Nienaber

BERLIN (Reuters) – Investigators found fingerprints of a Tunisian suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack on the door of the truck that ploughed through the crowds, killing 12, German media said on Thursday, as a nationwide manhunt for the migrant was underway.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack in which a truck smashed through wooden huts selling gifts, mulled wine and sausages on Monday evening. It was the deadliest attack on German soil since 1980.

The media did not name their source for the report about 24-year-old Anis Amri’s fingerprints and police declined to comment.

Anis Amri in a combination image released by German police.

Anis Amri in a combination image released by German police. REUTERS/BKA

The Berlin attack has raised concerns across Europe in the approach to Christmas, with markets in France, target of a series of militant attacks over the last year, tightening security with concrete barriers. Troops were also being posted at churches.

The Berlin market reopened on Thursday ringed by concrete bollards.

Police in the western German city of Dortmund arrested four people who had been in contact with Amri, media reports said, but a spokesman for the chief federal prosecutor denied that and said he would give no further details on the operation.

Bild newspaper cited an anti-terrorism investigator as saying it was clear in spring that Amri was looking for accomplices for an attack and was interested in weapons.

ASYLUM REQUEST REJECTED

The report said preliminary proceedings had been opened against Amri in March based on information he was planning a robbery to get money to buy automatic weapons and “possibly carry out an attack”.

In mid-2016, he spoke to two IS fighters and Tunisian authorities listened in on their conversation before informing German authorities. Amri also offered himself as a suicide attacker on known Islamist chat sites, Bild said.

Police started looking for Amri after finding an identity document under the driver’s seat of the truck used in the attack. Authorities have stressed he is just a suspect and not necessarily the driver of the truck.

Broadcaster rbb said the perpetrator lost both his wallet and mobile phone while running away from the attack site.

On Wednesday, Ralf Jaeger, interior minister of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), said the Tunisian appeared to have arrived in Germany in July 2015 and his asylum application had been rejected in June 2016.

Klaus Bouillon, head of the group of interior ministers from Germany’s federal states, said Islamists often left identity documents at attack sites – as was the case in Paris attacks – to steer public opinion against refugees.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has faced calls to tighten asylum procedures since the attack. Armin Schuster of her Christian Democrats, told broadcaster NDR: “We need to send the signal: Only set off for Germany if you have a reason for asylum.”

The Italian Foreign Ministry said an Italian woman named Fabrizia Di Lorenzo was among the victims and the Israeli Foreign Ministry said an Israeli woman called Dalia Elyakim had been identified among the dead.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin, Michael Nienaber, Thorsten Severin, Victoria Bryan in Berlin and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Mazar-i-Sharif,Afghanistan; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Turkish prosecutors probing why Russian envoy’s killer not taken alive: state media

Russian ambassador after assassination

By Ece Toksabay

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish prosecutors are investigating why the off-duty policeman who shot dead Russia’s ambassador to Turkey was not captured alive, state media said on Wednesday, as the number of people arrested over the killing rose to 11.

Ambassador Andrei Karlov was gunned down from behind while delivering a speech in an Ankara art gallery on Monday. His killer was identified by Turkish authorities as Mevlut Mert Altintas, 22, who shouted “Don’t forget Aleppo” and “Allahu Akbar” – Arabic for “God is greatest” – as he fired the shots.

Russian and Turkey both cast the attack as an attempt to ruin a recent thawing of relations chilled by the civil war in Syria, where they back opposing sides. The war reached a potential turning point last week when Russian-backed Syrian forces ended rebel resistance in the northern city of Aleppo.

The state-run Anadolu Agency said prosecutors were investigating why Turkish special forces, who stormed the gallery after the killing, did not take Altintas alive.

Initial findings suggest he continued to fire at police officers, shouting: “You cannot capture me alive!” Anadolu said. The officers shot Altintas in the legs, but he continued to return fire while crawling on the ground, it said.

President Tayyip Erdogan defended the police actions. “There is some speculation about why he wasn’t captured alive. Look what happened in Besiktas when they tried to capture an attacker alive,” Erdogan told reporters, referring to twin bombings this month outside the stadium of Istanbul’s Besiktas soccer team.

Forty-four people, mostly policemen, were killed and more than 150 wounded in the dual bombing, the second of which saw a suicide bomber detonating explosives while surrounded by police.

A Reuters cameraman at the scene of Monday’s killing of the Russian envoy said he heard shooting from inside the art gallery for some minutes after special forces stormed the building.

Anadolu also said the number of people detained in connection with the killing had risen to 11. Security sources told Reuters on Tuesday that six people – including Altintas’s mother, father, sister and flatmate – were in custody.

At Russian President Vladimir Putin’s request, a joint Russian-Turkish investigation team has been set up. The Russian contingent is made up of 18 officials, including a prosecutor and two defense attaches, Anadolu said.

More than 100 people from the Ankara police department, mostly from the anti-terrorism unit, are involved, it said.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was too early to say who stood behind the murder of its ambassador. It has also said the assassination was a blow to Turkey’s prestige, comments that are likely to unnerve Ankara.

(Additional reporting by Gulsen Solaker and Melih Aslan; editing by David Dolan and Mark Heinrich)

Islamic State claims responsibility for shootout at Jordanian castle

Jordanian policemen stand guard in the vicinity of Kerak Castle where armed gunmen carried out an attack, in the city of Karak, Jordan.

AMMAN (Reuters) – Islamic State militants claimed responsibility on Tuesday for a shootout at a Crusader castle in the southern Jordanian city of Karak in which at least nine people including a Canadian tourist were killed.

An Islamic State statement said four IS fighters undertook the operation on Sunday that ended in their deaths. Jordanian officials have not said who they suspect in the attack though security sources said the perpetrators were Jordanian nationals.

Jordanian police said late on Sunday that they had killed four “terrorist outlaws” after flushing them out of the castle where they were holed up after an exchange of fire that lasted several hours. Security forces were able to release around 10 tourists unharmed. At least 30 people were taken to hospital.

Interior Minister Salamah Hamad said on Monday at least five suicide belts were found, together with an ammunition cache, automatic weapons and explosives in a hideout in a house in the desert town of Qatranah, 30 km (20 miles) northeast of Karak.

The gunmen had fled to Karak after an exchange of fire with the police, Hamad said. Based on the quantities of explosives and weapons, “I don’t think the target was just Karak castle, it’s more,” he added. He would not elaborate, saying disclosing details at this stage could imperil national security.

Jordan has been relatively unscathed by the uprisings, civil wars and Islamist militancy that have swept the Middle East since 2011, but maintains a high level of vigilance.

However, it is among the few Arab states that have taken part in a U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State militants holding territory in Syria and Iraq. Many Jordanians oppose their country’s involvement, saying it has led to the killing of fellow Muslims and raised security threats inside Jordan.

Last November three U.S. military trainers were shot dead when their car was fired on by a Jordanian army member at the gate of a military base. Washington disputed the official Jordanian version that they were shot at for failing to stop, and said it did not rule out political motives.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Editing by Mark Heinrich)