Tag Archives: Death

What are Haiti’s humanitarian needs after Hurricane Matthew?

People wade across a flooded street while Hurricane Matthew passes through Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

By Sebastien Malo

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Hurricane Matthew, which slammed into Haiti this week, has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the impoverished nation since a devastating earthquake hit six years ago, according to the United Nations.

The storm ripped through Haiti on Tuesday, causing heavy flooding and knocking down houses.

Citing Haitian authorities, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at least 350,000 people needed immediate assistance.

The full impact remained unclear, however, with communications down in many of the worst-affected areas.

Here are what some of the world’s leading aid agencies expect will be humanitarian needs in Haiti in the storm’s wake.

Helene Robin, Handicap International’s head of emergency operations:

“Initial information reaching us is worrying. Many affected people have lost their homes, crops, and livestock. We will have to face a logistical challenge to reach these very remote areas and provide humanitarian assistance which these isolated populations need. We also fear that the floods caused by Hurricane Matthew entail substantial health risks such as the spread of cholera.” Carlos Veloso, World Food Programme’s country director:

“Because of the severity in the south, we expect that certain roads will be closed and we need to repair them immediately. The second big challenge will be the access to populations in the mountains in the south. Normally access here is not easy, and with a hurricane the strength of Matthew it will become more difficult.” Sylvie Savard, country representative in the joint office of the Lutheran World Federation and Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe in Haiti:

“The most affected groups are those most vulnerable living in areas along the coast, in low lying areas or close to steep slopes. Many people, especially in rural areas, live in poorly constructed homes that could not stand up to the winds and rains. People have been evacuated to save their lives, but the storm and the floods will have swept away what little they have.” Jean Claude Fignole, Oxfam’s influence program director in Haiti:

“Our first response will concentrate on saving lives by providing safe water and hygiene kits to avoid the spread of cholera. Right now there are at least 10,000 people displaced from their homes and in need of safe shelter, water and food.” Ravi Tripptrap, Malteser International Americas’ executive director:

“The floods have been particularly damaging in the slum community of Cité Soleil. Sewage canals are overflowing and filling the streets with garbage and human waste; make-shift shanty homes have been washed away. This is where our help is needed.”

(Reporting by Sebastien Malo, Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

New Famine Fears Loom in Yemen

A nurse checks a boy at a hospital intensive care unit in Sanaa, Yemen

By Jonathan Saul, Noah Browning and Mohammed Ghobari

LONDON/DUBAI (Reuters) – Intensive care wards in Yemen’s hospitals are filled with emaciated children hooked up to monitors and drips – victims of food shortages that could get even worse due to a reorganization of the central bank that is worrying importers.

With food ships finding it hard to get into Yemen’s ports due to a virtual blockade by the Saudi-led coalition that has backed the government during an 18-month civil war, over half the country’s 28 million people already do not have enough to eat, according to the United Nations.

Yemen’s exiled president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, last month ordered the central bank’s headquarters to be moved from the capital Sanaa, controlled by Houthi rebels in the north, to the southern port of Aden, which is held by the government. He also appointed a new governor, a member of his government who has said the bank has no money.

Trade sources involved in importing food to the Arab peninsula’s poorest country say this decision will leave them financially exposed and make it harder to bring in supplies.

Diplomats and aid officials believe the crisis surrounding the central bank could adversely affect ordinary Yemenis.

“The politicization of the central bank and attempts by the parties in the conflict to use it as a tool to hurt one another … threaten to push the poorest over the edge,” said Richard Stanforth, humanitarian policy adviser with Oxfam.

“Everything is stacked against the people on the brink of starvation in Yemen.”

The effects of food shortages can already be seen. At the children’s emergency unit at the Thawra hospital in the port of Hodaida, tiny patients with skin sagging over their bones writhe in beds. Hallways and waiting rooms are crowded with parents seeking help for their hungry and dying children.

Salem Abdullah Musabih, 6, lies on a bed at a malnutrition intensive care unit at a hospital in the Red Sea port city of Hodaida, Yemen

Salem Abdullah Musabih, 6, lies on a bed at a malnutrition intensive care unit at a hospital in the Red Sea port city of Hodaida, Yemen September 11, 2016. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

 

Salem Issa, 6, rests his stick-thin limbs on a hospital bed as his mother watches over him. “I have a sick child, I used to feed him biscuits, but he’s sick, he won’t eat,” she said.

A nurse said the ward began taking in around 10 to 20 cases in April, but now struggles with 120 patients per month.

The World Food Programme says half Yemen’s children under five are stunted, meaning they are too short for their age because of chronic malnutrition.

IMPORTERS STRUGGLING

In July, Reuters reported that importers were already struggling to buy food from abroad because $260 million worth of their funds were frozen in Yemeni banks, while Western banks had cut credit lines.

Since then, importers have guaranteed much of the risk of financing shipments themselves.

The decision to move the central bank, seen as the last impartial bastion of the country’s financial system which has helped keep the economy afloat in wartime, is viewed as a major blow for suppliers who are mistrustful of the decision and expect even more chaos ahead. Foreign exchange is already scarce and the sources do not have confidence in the new governor.

All of this will lead to further food disruptions and more hardship for Yemenis already facing impending famine, according to the trade sources.

“We have begun to cancel our forward contracts – it’s just impossible to trade when there is no financial system in place. There is no coverage from the central bank where we can trust them or know them,” said one source.

“This leaves anyone bringing in cargoes completely exposed,” added the source, who declined to be identified due to the worsening security situation and fear of reprisals.

Shipping data showed at least nine vessels carrying supplies such as wheat and sugar were on the way to the Yemeni ports of Hodaida and Salif, but the source said there were worries for forward shipments for late October and November.

A second trade source also active in Yemen confirmed the growing difficulties.

“Western banks are not willing to process payments and the whole system is freezing up. It is an ever growing struggle to do anything commercial,” the second source said.

“Obtaining foreign exchange has to be done through currency smuggling. Yemen is like a country of smugglers now  – this is unacceptable.”

A woman holds her child at the door of her hut in al-Tuhaita district of the Red Sea province of Hodaida, Yemen

A woman holds her child at the door of her hut in al-Tuhaita district of the Red Sea province of Hodaida, Yemen September 26, 2016. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

 

DWINDLING RESERVES

The old central bank in the capital Sanaa used Yemen’s dwindling foreign exchange reserves to guarantee shipments into a country which imports 90 percent of its food.

But Hadi disliked the bank paying salaries to his foes in the army and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement opposed to his internationally recognized government.

Struggling to advance on the battlefield and keen to undermine the Houthis, Hadi dismissed the bank’s governor, Mohamed Bin Humam, named Finance Minister Monasser Al Quaiti in his place and decreed the bank be moved to Aden.

It was a sudden decision that aroused suspicion among traders.

“The governor Humam enjoyed the confidence of all parties since he was clearly independent and working in the best interests of Yemen. To now appoint a minister of finance of the government is a retrograde step and none of the traders have any confidence in him or in the bank in Aden,” the first trade source said.

The new governor of the central bank did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Quaiti told the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper on Thursday he had inherited a bank with no money, but he pledged to keep it independent.

Ibrahim Mahmoud, of Yemen’s Social Development Fund, said only an improvement in the country’s financial system and an emergency aid effort could stop the spread of hunger.

“If there is no direct and immediate intervention on behalf of the international community and state organizations, we could be threatened by famine and a humanitarian catastrophe.”

Even though moving the central bank seemed to be aimed at hurting the Houthis, Yemeni economic officials and diplomats say the group has its own financial resources.

Losing out on $100 million in salaries to its fighters as suggested by the new bank governor may hurt the Houthis, but the bank’s closure in Sanaa is likely to hurt ordinary people already suffering from a collapse in the economy due to the war.

“It risks leaving the salaries of more than a million Yemenis unpaid. There may be a long-term effect on the Houthis, but the immediate effect will be on normal people trying to put food on the table,” Yemeni economic analyst Amal Nasser said.

 

(Additional reporting by Michael Hogan in Hamburg, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Hurricane Matthew hammers Haiti and Cuba, bears down on U.S.

Damage from Hurricane Matthew

By Makini Brice and Sarah Marsh

LES CAYES, Haiti/GUANTANAMO, Cuba (Reuters) – Hurricane Matthew, the fiercest Caribbean storm in almost a decade, hit Cuba and Haiti with winds of well over 100 miles-per-hour on Tuesday, pummeling towns, farmland and resorts and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to take cover.

Dubbed by the U.N. the worst humanitarian crisis to hit Haiti since a devastating 2010 earthquake, the Category Four hurricane unleashed torrential rain on the island of Hispaniola that Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic.

As it barreled towards the United States, the eye of the storm had moved off the northeastern coast of Cuba by Tuesday night, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

At least four people were killed in the Dominican Republic by collapsing walls and mudslides, as well as two in Haiti, where communications in the worst-hit areas were down, making it hard for authorities to assess the scale of the damage.

“Haiti is facing the largest humanitarian event witnessed since the earthquake six years ago,” said Mourad Wahba, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Haiti.

Over 200,000 people were killed in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, by the January 2010 earthquake.

Matthew was blowing sustained winds of 140 mph (230 kph) or more for much of Tuesday, though as night fell, the windspeed eased to about 130 mph, the NHC said.

Early reports suggested that Cuba had not been hit as hard as Haiti, where the situation was described as “catastrophic” in the port town of Les Cayes.

In the Cuban city of Guantanamo, streets emptied as people moved to shelters or inside their homes.

Matthew is likely to remain a powerful hurricane through at least Thursday night as it sweeps through the Bahamas towards Florida and the Atlantic coast of the southern United States, the NHC said. The storm is expected to be very near the east cost of Florida by Thursday evening, the center added.

The governor of South Carolina ordered the evacuation of more than 1 million people from Wednesday afternoon.

With communications out across most of Haiti and a key bridge impassable because of a swollen river, there was no immediate word on the full extent of potential casualties and damage from the storm in the poorest country in the Americas.

But Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters in Washington the U.S. Navy was considering sending an aircraft carrier and other ships to the region to aid relief efforts.

The United States has already offered Haiti the use of some helicopters, said Haitian Interior Minister Francois Anick Joseph, who added that damage to housing and crops in the country was apparently extensive.

Twice destroyed by hurricanes in the 18th century, Les Cayes was hit hard by Matthew.

“The situation in Les Cayes is catastrophic, the city is flooded, you have trees lying in different places and you can barely move around. The wind has damaged many houses,” said Deputy Mayor Marie Claudette Regis Delerme, who fled a house in the town of about 70,000 when the wind ripped the roof off.

One man died as the storm crashed through his home in the nearby beach town of Port Salut, Haiti’s civil protection service said. He had been too sick to leave for a shelter, officials said. The body of a second man who went missing at sea was also recovered, the government said. Another fisherman was killed in heavy seas over the weekend as the storm approached.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

As much as 3 feet (1 meter) of rain was forecast to fall over hills in Haiti that are largely deforested and prone to flash floods and mudslides, threatening villages as well as shantytowns in the capital Port-au-Prince.

The hurricane has hit Haiti at a time when tens of thousands of people are still living in flimsy tents and makeshift dwellings because of the 2010 earthquake.

“Farms have been hit really hard. Things like plantains, beans, rice – they’re all gone,” said Hervil Cherubin, country director in Haiti for Heifer International, a nonprofit organization that is working with 30,000 farming families across Haiti. “Most of the people are going to have to start all over again. Whatever they accumulated the last few years has been all washed out.”

Matthew was churning around 20 miles (32 km) northwest of the eastern tip of Cuba at 11 p.m. EDT (0300 GMT). It was moving north at about 8 miles per hour (13 kph), the NHC said.

Cuba’s Communist government traditionally puts extensive efforts into saving lives and property in the face of storms, and authorities have spent days organizing teams of volunteers to move residents to safety and secure property.

The storm thrashed the tourist town of Baracoa in the province of Guantanamo, passing close to the disputed U.S. Naval base and military prison.

The U.S. Navy ordered the evacuation of 700 spouses and children along with 65 pets of service personnel as the storm approached. U.S. President Barack Obama had earlier canceled a trip to Florida scheduled for Wednesday because of the potential impact of the storm, the White House said.

A hurricane watch was in effect for Florida from an area just north of Miami Beach to the Volusia-Brevard county line, near Cape Canaveral, which the storm could reach on Thursday, the hurricane center said.

Tropical storm or hurricane conditions could affect parts of Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina later this week, even if the center of Matthew remained offshore, the NHC said.

Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for Florida on Monday, designating resources for evacuations and shelters and putting the National Guard on standby.

(Reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince and Makini Brice in Les Cayes; Additional reporting by Marc Frank in Cuba and Jorge Pineda in Dominican Republic; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel and Dave Graham; Editing by Simon Gardner, Sandra Maler and Nick Macfie)

Suicide bombers hit Shi’ite gatherings in Baghdad, at least 11 dead: police

Member of Si

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Suicide bombers attacked two Shi’ite Muslim processions in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 40, police and medical sources said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the blasts at the Shi’ite events commemorating the slaying of Prophet Mohammad’s grandson Hussein.

A bomber detonated his explosive vest in the middle of one Shi’ite procession in the Amil district of southern Baghdad, killing six and wounding 25, the sources said.

A similar attack hit a procession in the eastern Mashtal district, killing five and wounding 18, the sources added.

(Reporting by Karem Raheem and Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Boy, 6, fights for his life after South Carolina school shooting

Sheriffs and officers at the scene of the South Carolina School Shooting

By Harriet McLeod

CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) – A first grader who was shot and wounded by a 14-year-old boy accused of killing his father before he opened fire outside a South Carolina elementary school is “fighting for his life,” a fire chief and the boy’s family said on Thursday.

Jacob Hall, 6, was struck in the leg on Wednesday afternoon during a shooting spree that also wounded another boy and a first-grade teacher at Townville Elementary School, about 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Atlanta.

Police said the teenager crashed a pickup truck into a fence around the rural school’s playground after he fatally shot his father, Jeffrey DeWitt Osborne, 47, at their home about 2 miles (3 km) away. The teen, who has not been named, is in custody.

“I hate my life,” he said before firing a handgun at the school, the Greenville News reported, citing the aunt of a 6-year-old girl who was headed outside for recess at the time.

The incident was the latest in a series of shootings at U.S. schools that has fueled debate about access to guns in America. Many schools have beefed up security precautions since 2012, when a gunman shot and killed 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Hall’s family said in a statement the 6-year-old was a “very sick little boy.” The message, provided through the Greenville Health System Children’s Hospital where he remains in critical condition, said a bullet tore through his femoral artery, causing massive blood loss that led to a “major brain injury.”

Billy McAdams, chief of the Townville Volunteer Fire Department, choked up on Thursday as he asked for prayers for “little Jacob,” whom he had helped treat at the scene.

“He’s still fighting for his life,” McAdams told a news conference.

Teacher Meghan Hollingsworth, who was shot in the shoulder, and the other boy, also 6, according to media reports, were treated and released.

McAdams credited fellow first responders and the school’s staff for taking action to prevent another school massacre. Hollingsworth shepherded students inside to safety and urged medical staff to care for the injured children before her, he said.

Jamie Brock, a 30-year veteran of the Townville Volunteer Fire Department, was unarmed when he confronted the shooter and pinned him down for police, McAdams said.

Brock has declined media interviews, saying he wanted the focus to remain on the victims.

“The true heroes of yesterday’s senseless tragedy are the teachers that put their lives on the line to protect the students,” Brock said in a statement read by McAdams at the news conference. “This will not take us down.”

Authorities said they did not know of any connection between the shooter and the school victims but had ruled out terrorism and ethnicity as motivating factors.

The suspect, who was home-schooled, was emotional when he called his grandparents Wednesday afternoon, authorities said.

His grandmother “could not make out what he was saying because he was crying and upset, and so they went to the house, and that’s when she discovered her son and called 911,” coroner Greg Shore told reporters. The teenager was gone.

His mother offered no insight into his motive in a statement released to media on her behalf on Thursday.

“Our entire family is absolutely shocked and saddened by the senseless actions of our son and grandson,” the statement said.

(Additional reporting Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Bill Trott, Lisa Shumaker and Paul Tait)

Three killed, more than 100 hurt in New Jersey morning train crash

Onlookers view a New Jersey Transit train that derailed and crashed through the station in Hoboken, New Jersey, U.S. in this picture courtesy of David Richman taken

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Three people were killed and more than 100 people were injured, some of them critically, when a New Jersey Transit train derailed and crashed through the station in Hoboken, New Jersey during the morning rush hour on Thursday, U.S. media and a transit official said.

MSNBC reported that three people were killed, citing medical officials.

There were well over 100 people with injuries, many of them with critical injuries, New Jersey Transit spokeswoman Jennifer Nelson told reporters. She did not say if there were any fatalities.

Dramatic pictures posted by commuters showed a train carriage that appeared to have smashed right through the station concourse, collapsing a section of the roof, scattering debris and wreckage and causing devastation.

ABC News said on its website that New Jersey Transit was reporting many passengers were trapped.

Hoboken lies on the west bank of the Hudson River across from New York City. Its station, one of the busiest in the metropolitan area, is used by many commuters traveling into Manhattan from New Jersey and further afield.

Linda Albelli, 62, said she was sitting in her seat in one of the rear cars when the train approached the station. She said she knew something was wrong a moment before the impact.

“I thought to myself, ‘Oh my god, he’s not slowing up, and this is where we’re usually stop,'” Albelli said. “‘We’re going too fast,’ and with that there was this tremendous crash.”

Passengers helped each other off the train and onto the platform. They ultimately had to cross the tracks to get to safety, she said: “When we got on the platform there was nowhere to go. The ceiling had come down.”

The injured sat on benches in the station while they waited for first responders, said Albelli, who lives in Closter, New Jersey. She did not know how many had been hurt.

“There was just so much, a lot of people in need of attention,” she said. “There were a lot of people who were really hurt.”

The train had about five or six carriages and was not full because many passengers exit at Secaucus, Albelli said.

New Jersey Transit said in a post on Twitter that rail service in and out of Hoboken was suspended due to a train accident.

The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey did not have an estimate of when PATH service will resume, a spokesman said.

The Federal Railroad Administration said in post on Twitter that its investigators were en route to the scene.

New Jersey State Police said it was sending “multiple assets” to the station and monitoring the situation.

The worst passenger train crash in recent years in the United States was the crash of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia in May, 2015 that killed eight passengers and injured 186.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney, David Ingram and Amy Tennery in New York; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Tim Ahmann in Washington; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Rescuers pull 15 out from China landslide, 32 missing

A rescue worker is seen next to an overturned car at the site of a landslide caused by heavy rains brought by Typhoon Megi, in Sucun Village, Lishui

BEIJING, Sept 29 (Reuters) – Rescuers have pulled 15 people alive from a landslide that slammed into a village in China’s eastern Zhejiang province after a typhoon but 32 people are still missing, state media said on Thursday.

Heavy rains brought by the remnants of Typhoon Megi caused the landslide to crash into Sucun village on Wednesday.

The microblog of official provincial news portal Zhejiang Online showed pictures of survivors being carried out on the backs of rescuers, while others dug through rubble to locate survivors.

It gave no details of those still missing other than to say one was an official who had been in the village to organise evacuations.

A mass of debris rolled down a lush mountain towards the small village, according to images posted on Zhejiang Online.

Mountainous Zhejiang, along with its neighbouring provinces, are frequently hit by typhoons at this time of year and are also highly susceptible to landslides.

Megi had already killed four people and injured more than 523 in Taiwan since it had roared in from the Pacific Ocean.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Paul Tait)

Investigators search for clues in South Carolina school shooting

Police officers investigate the scene of the shooting in the South Carolina Elementary school

By Harriet McLeod

CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) – Investigators were searching on Thursday for the motive behind a shooting spree by a South Carolina teenager who killed his father and wounded two school students and a teacher before being pinned down by a volunteer fireman.

The incident was the latest in a series of shootings at U.S. schools that has fueled debate about access to guns in America.

The 14-year-old boy, whose name has not been released, shot and killed his father, Jeffrey DeWitt Osborne, 47, on Wednesday afternoon.

Then he drove to Townville Elementary School, where he shot two boys and a woman teacher with a handgun, before being subdued by the volunteer firefighter, police said.

Authorities said they were checking if there was a connection between the gunman and the school victims, but had ruled out terrorism and ethnicity as motivating factors.

The suspect was in custody and interviewed by investigators on Wednesday night, Anderson County Sheriff John Skipper told a news conference.

“We are in the process of taking him through the legal process,” he added.

Authorities said the suspect was home-schooled and called his grandmother, who went to his home and found his father.

“She could not make out what he was saying because he was crying and upset, and so they went to the house, and that’s when she discovered her son and called 911,” coroner Greg Shore told the news conference.

Next, the boy drove a pickup truck about 2 miles (3.2 km) to the school, and crashed into a fence around the playground before shooting the other three victims, police said.

One boy, Jacob Hall, 6, was shot in the leg, police said. He is in critical condition, Greenville Health System spokeswoman Sandy Dees said.

The other boy, also 6, according to media reports, was shot in the foot and the teacher was shot in the shoulder, authorities said.

Both were treated and released from hospital, said Ross Norton, a spokesman for AnMed Health Medical Center.

Volunteer firefighter Jamie Brock pinned down the teenager after he began shooting, as staff led children to safety, Taylor Jones, the emergency services director for Anderson County, told a news conference.

Brock, a 30-year veteran of the Townville Volunteer Fire Department, was hailed on social media as a hero and credited with preventing another school massacre.

Police arrived within minutes of a 911 call to take the suspect into custody. He never entered the school building, said Chief Deputy Keith Smith.

About 280 students attend the school in Anderson County, near the Georgia state line about 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Atlanta. It will stay shut on Thursday and Friday as authorities investigate.

U.S. schools have beefed up security precautions since 2012, when a gunman shot and killed 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Immediately after the shooting, armed officers guarded the students as they traveled by bus from the school to a nearby church, media said. Television images showed police swarming the school, with some officers on the roof.

Wednesday’s events follow a Texas incident this month in which a 14-year-old girl shot and wounded a fellow student before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

(Additional reporting Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Protests grow tense after police slaying of black man in California

Protests in California after black man was shot

By Dan Whitcomb and Marty Graham

EL CAJON, Calif. (Reuters) – A second night of mostly peaceful protests over the fatal police shooting in Southern California of an unarmed black man said to be mentally ill climaxed on Wednesday as protesters confronted officers in riot gear who retreated as tensions rose.

Protesters earlier in the day shouted “murder” and demanded a federal investigation of Tuesday’s shooting in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, which came just as racially charged anger over similar incidents in two other U.S. cities during the past two weeks had begun to subside.

The Tuesday mid-afternoon shooting unfolded after two El Cajon police officers responded to several calls about a mentally unstable person walking in traffic, then confronted the man behind a restaurant.

One policeman opened fire with his service pistol and his partner simultaneously fired a Taser stun gun when the man pulled an object from his pocket and took aim at them in a “shooting stance,” according to police.

No weapon from the man, however, was recovered at the scene, police said. The object he was said to be carrying was not specified.

The next day, Mayor Bill Wells confirmed the victim’s identity as Alfred Olango, a 38-year-old Ugandan immigrant with a U.S. felony record of convictions for drug and weapon offenses, according to federal court records.

Friends and activists said Olango was mentally ill and may have been suffering a seizure in the moments before his death.

Police said they obtained cellphone video of the shooting from a bystander, but authorities released only a still frame showing two officers pointing weapons at a man who was aiming an object at them.

In a separate video clip taken moments after the shooting and posted on social media, a woman who refers to herself as the victim’s sister is heard crying in anguish, “Oh my God. You killed my brother. I just called for help and … you killed him.”

Wells told a news conference on Wednesday that he had seen the footage obtained by police. He described it as “certainly enlightening,” adding, “I don’t believe that this is going to be a tremendously complicated process for people to figure out what happened.”

“I saw a man who was distraught, a man who was acting in ways that looked like he was in great pain, and I saw him get gunned down and killed, and it broke my heart. If it was my son I would be devastated,” Wells said.

Wells said all 120 officers on El Cajon’s police force receive training from San Diego County’s Psychiatric Emergency Response Teams, or PERT, program, though no PERT-assigned officer was available for dispatch to Tuesday’s call.

CRIES FOR ‘JUSTICE’

Two other black men were killed days earlier by police in questionable circumstances in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, igniting demonstrations decrying racial bias by U.S. law enforcement. Authorities imposed a state of emergency and a curfew to quell unrest in Charlotte.

Olango’s slaying in California likewise immediately sparked hours of angry protests near the shooting scene.

Speaking to reporters the next day, El Cajon Police Chief Jeff Davis appealed for calm and urged against rushing to judgment. The predominantly white city is home to some 100,000 people, including many residents who are immigrants from the Middle East and Africa.

Civil rights activists and several hundred protesters returned to the streets on Wednesday, gathering first outside the police department to chant “murder,” “justice for Alfred Olango” and “black lives matter.”

“We are not going to stop until we get justice,” the Reverend Shane Harris, president of the National Action Network’s San Diego chapter, said at the rally.

Protests continued after dark with hundreds of people marching from the shooting scene to City Hall and back, shouting Olango’s name, taunting police and periodically blocking traffic.

The crowd later staged a boisterous but peaceful rally near the site of Olango’s death that turned tense when police officers, who initially kept a low profile, made a renewed show of force in riot gear.

A standoff appeared on the verge of escalation as some protesters hurled water bottles at police, who stood their ground before pulling back in what seemed to be a tactical retreat.

Demonstrators milled about the streets afterward, but the mood grew more relaxed and the crowds gradually diminished with no immediate signs of further lawlessness.

The San Diego County District Attorney was investigating the shooting, and police said the bystander’s video would be released once that probe was complete. Wells said the FBI also was probing the incident.

(Additional reporting by Norma Galeana and Alan Devall in El Cajon, Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Laila Kearney in New York and Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky, Jeffrey Benkoe and Bernard Orr)

MH17 was shot down by Russian-made missile fired from rebel held area

Local workers transport a piece of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 wreckage at the site of the plane crash near the village of Hrabove (Grabovo) in Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine

By Toby Sterling and Anthony Deutsch

NIEUWEGEIN, Netherlands (Reuters) – A Malaysian airliner shot down in eastern Ukraine was hit by a Russian-made Buk missile launched from a village held by rebels fighting Ukrainian government forces, international prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The findings challenge Moscow’s suggestion that Malaysia Airlines flight 17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in July 2014, was brought down by the Ukrainian military. All 298 people on board, most of them Dutch citizens, were killed.

The prosecutors cannot file charges but victims’ relatives have been seeking details of who shot the plane down in the hope that it might lead eventually to prosecutions over an incident which led to a sharp rise in East-West tensions.

The Buk missile system used to shoot down the plane fired one missile from the village of Pervomaysk and was later returned to Russia, said the prosecutors, from the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine.

They told a news conference in the central Dutch city of Nieuwegein that the investigative team had identified 100 people who were described as being of interest to them but had not yet been formally identified individual suspects.

It was not clear whether an order had been given for fighters to launch the missile or whether they had acted independently, the prosecutors said.

A civilian investigation by the Dutch Safety Board also concluded last year that MH17 was hit by a Buk missile fired from eastern Ukraine, but Moscow denied that pro-Russian rebels were responsible.

Repeating those denials on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “First-hand radar data identified all flying objects which could have been launched or were in the air over the territory controlled by rebels at that moment.”

“The data are clear-cut…there is no rocket. If there was a rocket, it could only have been fired from elsewhere,” he said.

The investigators said they had not had access to the new radar images on which Moscow was basing its latest statements.

Ukraine's President Poroshenko and Dutch ambassador to Ukraine Klompenhouwer commemorate victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko (R) and Dutch ambassador to Ukraine Kees Klompenhouwer commemorate victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 outside the Dutch embassy in Kiev July 21, 2014. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

RELATIVES WANT DETAILS

Victims’ families were informed of the findings shortly before the prosecutors’ news conference.

At the time of the incident on July 17, 2014, pro-Russian separatists were fighting Ukrainian government forces in the region. The Boeing 777 broke apart in mid-air, flinging wreckage over several kilometers (miles) of fields in rebel-held territory.

Prosecutors cannot file charges because there is no international agreement on what court a case would be heard in.

Speaking before the news conference, Silene Fredriksz, whose 23-year-old son Bryce was on the airplane with his girlfriend, Daisy Oehlers, said the victims’ families wanted justice.

“As a family we are impatient. We want to know what happened, how it happened and why. We want those responsible to face justice,” she said.

The downing played a significant part in a decision by the European Union and United States to impose sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict.

Ukrainian and Western officials, citing intelligence intercepts, have blamed pro-Russian rebels for the incident. Russia has always denied direct involvement in the Ukraine conflict and rejects responsibility for the destruction of MH17.

Prosecutors have sought legal assistance from Moscow since October 2014, and visited in person for a week in July.

“Russian authorities have offered information in the past, but have not answered all questions,” they said in a statement at the time.

(Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Pravin Char)