Tag Archives: Death

Two explosions hit Istanbul’s main Ataturk airport, at least 10 dead

Paramedics push a stretcher at Turkey's largest airport, Istanbul Ataturk

By Daren Butler and Ayla Jean Yackley

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Two suicide bombers opened fire before blowing themselves up at the entrance to the main international airport in Istanbul on Tuesday, killing at least 10 people and wounding many more, Turkish officials and witnesses said.

Police fired shots to try to stop the attackers just before they reached a security checkpoint at the arrivals hall of the Ataturk airport but they blew themselves up, one of the officials said.

Speaking in parliament, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said that based on initial information he could only confirm there had been one attacker. He said 10 people were killed and around 20 wounded.

“According to information I have received, at the entrance to the Ataturk Airport international terminal a terrorist first opened fire with a Kalashnikov and then blew themself up,” he said in comments broadcast by CNN Turk.

The state-run Anadolu agency said around 60 people were wounded, six of them seriously.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Ataturk is Turkey’s largest airport and a major transport hub for international travelers. Pictures posted on social media from the site showed wounded people lying on the ground inside and outside one of the terminal buildings.

A witness told Reuters security officials prevented his taxi and other cars from entering the airport at around 9:50 pm (02:50 p.m. EDT). Drivers leaving the terminal shouted “Don’t enter! A bomb exploded!” from their windows to incoming traffic, he said.

Television footage showed ambulances rushing to the scene. One witness told CNN Turk that gunfire was heard from the car park at the airport. Taxis were ferrying wounded people from the airport, the witness said.

FLIGHTS HALTED

The head of Red Crescent, Kerem Kinik, said on CNN Turk that people should go to blood donation centres and not hospitals to give blood and called on people to avoid main roads to the airport to avoid blocking path of emergency vehicles.

Authorities halted the takeoff of scheduled flights from the airport and passengers were transferred to hotels, a Turkish Airlines official said. Earlier an airport official said some flights to the airport had been diverted.

Turkey has suffered a spate of bombings this year, including two suicide attacks in tourist areas of Istanbul blamed on Islamic State, and two car bombings in the capital, Ankara, which were claimed by a Kurdish militant group.

In the most recent attack, a car bomb ripped through a police bus in central Istanbul during the morning rush hour, killing 11 people and wounding 36 near the main tourist district, a major university and the mayor’s office.

Turkey, which is part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, is also fighting Kurdish militants in its largely Kurdish southeast.

(Reporting by Istanbul bureau; Writing by David Dolan and Nick Tattesall; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Firefighters gain ground over devastating California blaze

A firetruck drives through a neighborhood decimated by the Erskine Fire in South Lake, California,

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Firefighters in the foothills of central California have made significant gains against a blaze that has killed at least two people and destroyed scores of homes in a devastating start to the state’s wildfire season, authorities said on Monday.

Crews had carved containment lines around 40 percent of the fire’s perimeter by Sunday night, up from 10 percent earlier in the day, and evacuation orders were lifted on Monday for two communities previously threatened.

Officials however reported a higher toll of property losses on Monday, with about 250 structures reduced to rubble, 50 more than estimated the previous day, and 75 buildings damaged.

The so-called Erskine Fire had blackened more than 45,000 acres of drought-parched brush and grass by Monday morning on the fringes of Lake Isabella in Kern County, California, about 110 miles (180 km) north of Los Angeles.

The blaze erupted Thursday afternoon and spread quickly through several communities south of the lake, driven by high winds, as it roared largely unchecked for two days and forced hundreds of residents from their homes.

Some 2,500 homes were threatened by flames at the fire’s peak.

On Friday, at least two people were confirmed to have been killed in the blaze. Kern County fire authorities warned that the death toll could rise as investigators combed through the rubble of homes that went up in flames.

Anglican priest Byron McKaig and his wife, Gladys, were killed in the fire, Bishop Eric Menees of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin said in a statement.

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

More than 2,000 personnel have been assigned to the blaze, the biggest and most destructive of nine large wildfires burning up and down the state, from the Klamath National Forest near Oregon to desert scrubland close to the Mexico border. Most of those were at least 60 percent contained by Monday.

A blistering heat wave that has baked much of California in abnormally high temperatures ranging from the upper 90s to the triple digits has been a major factor contributing to the conflagrations.

While California’s wildfire season officially began in May, the rash of blazes since last week signaled the state’s first widespread outbreak of intense, deadly fire activity this year.

Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said the state had already experienced some 2,400 wildfires, small and large, since January. They burned a total of 99,000 acres (400 square km).

Winter and spring rainfalls helped ease drought conditions but also helped spur growth of grasses and brush that have since dried out, providing more potential fuel for wildfires, he said.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Paul Tait)

Four dead in West Virginia floods as rain-swollen rivers crest

(Reuters) – West Virginia declared a state of emergency amid the worst flooding in more than a century that killed at least four people and prompted rescues of hundreds of others forced to evacuate swamped homes, officials said on Friday.

The mountainous state was pummeled by up to 10 inches of rain in a single day on Thursday, causing rivers and streams to overflow, National Weather Service meteorologist Frank Pereira said.

“The flooding we experienced Thursday and into today is among the worst in a century for some parts of the state,” Governor Earl Ray Tomblin said.

The governor declared a state of emergency in 44 of 55 counties and deployed up to 150 members of the West Virginia National Guard to help rescue efforts on Friday.

“Rivers hopefully are going to crest sometime today between noon and tonight,” said Tim Rock, spokesman for the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

“Recovery and rescue is expected to last through the weekend,” he said.

Three people died in the flooding in Kanawha County, the most populous in the state, including a woman in her car, a senior citizen and another person, as well as one person in Ohio County in the state’s northern Panhandle, Rock said.

“There have been towns that have been completely surrounded by water,” Rock said. “People say there is 8 to 9 feet of water in their house.

“It’s at least into the hundreds forced to get emergency shelter,” he said. “Even if you can get back into your home, who knows what kind of shape it’s in.”

West Virginia received one-quarter of its annual rainfall in a single day, Pereira said.

“It was multiple rounds of thunderstorms that continued to move across the same area, a relatively small area, and the mountainous terrain exacerbated the flooding,” Pereira said.

Rains eased on Friday with only scattered showers expected, he said.

The storms that drenched West Virginia were part of a severe weather system that has swept through the U.S. Midwest, triggering tornadoes.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Israeli troops say kill Palestinian attacker in West Bank

Israel security after the death of a Palestinian attacker in the West Bank

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian woman who rammed a vehicle into a parked car near an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank on Friday, injuring two people sitting inside, the army said.

“Forces on site responded and fired toward the attacker, resulting in her death,” a military spokeswoman said.

Palestinian officials had no immediate comment.

Palestinian knife, shooting and car ramming attacks have killed 32 Israelis and two visiting U.S. citizens over the past eight months. Israeli forces have shot dead at least 198 Palestinians, 135 of whom Israel has said were assailants. Others were killed in clashes and protests.

Religious and political tensions over a Jerusalem site sacred to both Muslims and Jews have fueled the worst wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence since the 2014 Gaza war.

Confrontations have been exacerbated by Palestinians’ frustration over Israel’s 48-year occupation of land they seek for an independent state and the expansion of settlements in those territories which were captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Tornado, hail storms kill at least 51 in east China: Xinhua

Tornado and hail storm hits China

BEIJING (Reuters) – A tornado and hail storms killed at least 51 people on Thursday in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, state media said.

The storms brought down power lines and houses, Xinhua news agency said.

“Downpours, hail storms and a tornado battered parts of Yancheng city … causing many houses to topple,” it said.

Pictures posted by media online showed injured people lying amid overturned houses and cars, split tree trunks and broken power lines.

Severe floods in southern China killed at least 22 people and left 20 missing earlier this week.

(Reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Florida gator that killed boy likely removed: authorities

Lane Graves killed by gator in Florida

(Reuters) – The Florida alligator that killed a vacationing 2-year-old boy at Disney World Resort has likely been removed from the area of the attack, authorities said on Wednesday.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said it had suspended trapping activities near where the boy, Lane Graves, of Elkhorn, Nebraska, was attacked last week.

The commission “is confident that the alligator responsible for the attack has been removed,” it said in a statement. Trappers have taken six alligators from the area.

The alligator snatched the toddler on June 14 as he played at the edge of the Seven Seas Lagoon, a manmade lake at the Walt Disney Co resort.

Police divers found Lane’s body underwater the following afternoon, not far from where he was taken. An autopsy found that he died from drowning and traumatic injuries.

At the time, the resort had “No Swimming” signs that did not mention alligators. Disney has since installed signs by the lagoon warning guests of alligators and snakes.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Daniel Wallis and David Gregorio)

Louisiana officer shot and killed during pedestrian stop

(Reuters) – A Louisiana sheriff’s deputy died of gunshot wounds on Wednesday after being shot three times in the back by a pedestrian he had stopped in a high-crime suburb of New Orleans, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office said.

Sheriff Newell Normand told reporters at a late night news conference that deputy David F. Michel, Jr., 50, got into a struggle with the suspect around noon local time, believing the man was following another individual.

Normand said the suspect, identified as 19-year-old Jerman Neveaux, pulled a revolver and fired a total of three shots into Michel’s back during the confrontation.

Michel, a detective who was assigned to a street crimes unit, died at a local hospital.

“David, I wish I had 1,000 of him,” an emotional Normand said, adding that the shooting was “a cold-blooded murder.”

Neveaux fled into the surrounding neighborhood and was later apprehended.

Bystander video published online by local broadcaster FOX8 showed two of several officers striking a prone Neveaux more than a dozen times as he is arrested, footage which Normand said his office would investigate.

Neveaux was treated for minor injuries at a hospital. Normand said Neveaux admitted to the shooting, saying he was on probation and did not want to go to jail for possessing a firearm.

Michel worked as a reserve deputy for the department starting in 2007 and became a full-time deputy in February of 2013, the office said.

(Reporting by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Florida and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Richard Chang and Sandra Maler)

Libyan forces take losses in battle for Sirte against Islamic State

Libyan forces

By Aidan Lewis

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libyan forces fighting Islamic State in its stronghold of Sirte said on Wednesday that 36 of their men had been killed and nearly 150 wounded in the previous day’s clashes, one of the heaviest tolls in their month-long campaign.

Islamic State militants had been fighting hard to defend the shrinking territory they still control in the residential center of Sirte, said Abdalla Binrasali, a spokesman at the forces’ media center in Misrata.

“The resistance was fierce and they were firing with everything they’ve got, mortars, rockets and rifles,” he said. “They fear that if they lose more ground they will be defeated.”

Brigades largely composed of fighters from Misrata launched a campaign to retake Sirte from Islamic State last month. They rapidly recaptured ground west of Sirte at the end of May, but their advance slowed as they closed in on the center of the coastal city.

On Tuesday fighting escalated and the brigades said they had taken control of parts of the “700” neighborhood, the broadcasting and electricity company headquarters and a mosque.

The “700” neighborhood is strategically important because Islamic State snipers have been positioning themselves on the district’s taller buildings.

The brigades based in Misrata are aligned with a U.N.-backed unity government that arrived in Tripoli in March. It is seeking to replace two other rival governments that were set up in Tripoli and the east in 2014, and to unite Libya’s many political and armed factions.

Islamic State took advantage of Libya’s political turmoil to establish a presence in several of the country’s towns and cities from 2014.

It took full control of Sirte, the hometown of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, last year, creating its most significant base outside Syria and Iraq. However, the jihadist group has struggled to retain territory elsewhere in Libya.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

At least six dead as rains batter quake-hit southwestern Japan

Search and rescue operations in Japan

TOKYO (Reuters) – At least six people died and a university student was missing on Wednesday as record-breaking rains battered parts of southwestern Japan still reeling from earthquakes two months ago, setting off flooding and landslides.

Hundreds of thousands people were advised to evacuate a wide swathe of Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost main island, where 49 people died in earthquakes in April that weakened the ground and left it prone to landslides, NHK national news channel reported.

“I was in such a hurry to leave I don’t have anything more than what I’m wearing,” one elderly woman told NHK at an evacuation center.

Among those killed were a couple in their 80s whose house in Kumamoto was engulfed by mud after some places were hit by more than 100 mm (4 inches) of rain in an hour.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in Kumamoto on Wednesday to kick off campaigning for an election next month for parliament’s upper house.

Authorities warned of further landslides in areas where the ground was weakened by a 7.3 magnitude earthquake in April and several thousand people are still living in evacuation centers.

The area has been shaken by a steady series of aftershocks, including one on Wednesday morning.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Tearful Nepal relatives of Kabul attack victims receive bodies

Family cries over Nepali soldiers killed in an attack

By Gopal Sharma

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Sobbing and weeping relatives of 12 Nepali nationals who were killed when a suicide bomber struck a minibus in Kabul received the bodies of their loved ones on Wednesday after they were flown from Afghanistan.

The victims were security guards working at the Canadian embassy in Kabul and came under attack on the way to work early on Monday. Two Indian nationals were also killed in the attack which left seven Nepalis wounded.

“This is the most difficult job for me to receive him dead,” said Sanjita Kumari, wife of Jitendra Singh Thapa, who came to the airport in Kathmandu with her 4-month-old son, to receive her husband’s body. “But there is no alternative and I must face it,” Kumari told Reuters, her baby pressed to the chest as tears streamed down her face.

Thapa, a former Indian army soldier, had served as a security guard in Iraq before going to war-torn Afghanistan in February this year with a promise to come back in November.

Relatives of the victims like Kumari heard of Monday’s attack in the media. She prayed for her husband until being told by the recruitment agency that he was dead.

“This came as a shock to me,” the 30-year-old said.

She said Thapa wanted their baby to serve in the British Army that has been recruiting Gurkha soldiers from the foothills of Nepal for 200 years.

Prime Minister K.P. Oli paid tributes to victims by placing marigold garlands on the wooden coffins which were then handed over to the relatives for funerals.

Monday’s attack in Kabul was the latest in a surge of violence that highlights the challenges faced by the government and its Western backers, as Washington considers whether to delay plans to reduce the number of its troops in Afghanistan.

At least 8,000 Nepali nationals are working in Afghanistan, according to the labor department, but actual numbers could be higher as many cross over to India, which shares an open border with Nepal, and then travel on to Afghanistan.

Nepal allows its citizens to work in Afghanistan as security guards at the UN, foreign embassies and their missions.

“The government will study the situation in which Nepalis were targeted after which we will decide whether to continue this,” Labor Minister Deepak Bohara told Reuters.

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Douglas Busvine)