Tag Archives: Search

Iowa police searching for suspect in ambush slaying of two officers

A police photographer takes pictures of a bullet holes in a Des Moines' police vehicle after two police officers were shot and killed in separate attacks described as "ambush-style" in Des Moines, Iowa,

By Brian Frank

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) – Two Iowa police officers were shot dead in separate “ambush-style” killings as they sat in their patrol cars early on Wednesday, and police said they were urgently seeking a suspect they consider armed and dangerous.

Police are searching for a local man named Scott Michael Greene, 46. A police photo showed him as white, with a light beard.

“Our detectives are looking to speak with Mr. Green right now,” Des Moines police department spokesman Paul Parizek told a news conference. “He is definitely someone that we want to talk to.”

One officer was found dead about 1 a.m. local time in Urbandale, an affluent suburb of Des Moines. The second officer was found dead about 1:30 a.m. local time in the city.

“These officers were ambushed,” Parizek said, adding that they were shot while sitting in their patrol cars about 2 miles (3 km) apart.

“There is a clear and present danger to police officers right now,” he said.

The apparently unprovoked attacks came two years after two New York Police Department officers were shot dead while sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn, by a man who said he wanted to avenge the deaths of unarmed black men killed by police.

It was unclear what provoked Wednesday’s attack, Parizek said, adding that “we may never know.”

A police cruiser at the site of the Des Moines shooting was riddled with three bullet holes, according to a Reuters witness there.

“An attack on public safety officers is an attack on the public safety of all Iowans,” Ben Hammes, a spokesman for Governor Terry Branstand, said in a statement. “We call on Iowans to support our law enforcement officials in bringing this suspect to justice.”

Before the shootings in Iowa, 50 police officers had died by gunfire, two accidentally, in the line of duty in the United States this year, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page website.

“To see this pattern that is developing – that’s what’s unconscionable,” said House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan during an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt. “If it’s a random, mentally ill person, it’s one thing. But it’s people consciously going out and doing this.

“We have a lot of work to do in our communities to heal.”

Wednesday’s shootings come seven months after two Des Moines officers were killed when their vehicle was hit by a wrong-way drunken driver. Another Des Moines police officer died in a motorcycle accident in August.

Officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were the targets of deadly ambushes earlier this year after police killed two black men in separate incidents in a Minnesota suburb and Baton Rouge. Philadelphia police officers have been deliberately targeted by a gunman twice this year.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Gina Cherelus, Dave Ingram and Michael Flaherty in New York; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

Italy to hold mass funeral as search for bodies continue

Mourners cry next to a coffin prior the funeral for victims of the earthquake that leveled the town in Amatrice

By Matteo Berlenga and Iona Serrapica

AMATRICE, Italy (Reuters) – Italy hurriedly revised preparations for a mass funeral for earthquake victims on Tuesday after protests by bereaved relatives, as crews continued to dig for bodies under mounds of rubble.

Family members had objected to plans to hold the ceremony in an aircraft hangar in the town of Rieti where the bodies had been stored. The funeral will instead be held in Amatrice, the place hardest-hit by last week’s 6.2-magnitude quake.

Of the 292 confirmed dead, 231 were found in Amatrice, which was left in ruins.

A number of foreigners were among the dead, including 11 Romanians and three Britons.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, President Sergio Mattarella and Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos were scheduled to attend the funeral at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT), the Civil Protection Agency said.

Tuesday’s funeral is for some three dozen of the victims. Many of those who died in Amatrice on Aug. 24 were not residents and their funerals are being held in their hometowns.

Workers used heavy machinery to gravel over an area on Amatrice’s outskirts where the ceremony will take place within sight of shattered buildings.

Coffins of some of the victims of the earthquake in central Italy are seen inside a gym in Ascoli Piceno,

Coffins of some of the victims of the earthquake in central Italy are seen inside a gym in Ascoli Piceno, August 26, 2016. REUTERS/Adamo Di Loreto

Marquees were still being erected for the funeral ceremony as the first caskets arrived. A hearse and a van carrying at least four coffins had to be turned away until the work could be completed.

In the center of town emergency workers used mechanical diggers and bulldozers to search for bodies, an unknown number of which may still be trapped beneath dust and debris.

It is the second state-sponsored funeral in three days. On Saturday rites were held for victims of the quake from the adjoining Marche region. Amatrice is in the region of Lazio.

Controversy has grown over poor construction techniques, which may have been responsible for many deaths.

Investigators are looking into work done on the bell tower in Accumoli, which was recently restored but collapsed during the quake onto the home of a family of four, killing them all.

Italy sits on two seismic faultlines. Many of its buildings are hundreds of years old and susceptible to earthquake damage.

Almost 30 people died in earthquakes in northern Italy in 2012 and more than 300 in the city of L’Aquila in 2009.

(Additional reporting by Antonella Cinelli; writing by Steve Scherer; editing by Andrew Roche)

Egypt sends robot submarine to help plane crash search

Relatives of the Christian victims of the crashed EgyptAir flight MS804 react and cry during an absentee funeral mass at the main Cathedral in Cairo

By Ahmed Aboulenein and Amina Ismail

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt has sent a robot submarine to join the hunt for an EgyptAir plane which crashed in some of the deepest waters of the Mediterranean Sea with 66 people on board, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Sunday.

Ships and planes scouring the sea north of Alexandria have found body parts, personal belongings and debris from the Airbus 320, but are still trying to locate the black box recorders that could shed light on the cause of Thursday’s crash.

Sisi said that underwater equipment from Egypt’s offshore oil industry was being brought in to help the search.

“They have a submarine that can reach 3,000 meters under water,” he said in a televised speech. “It moved today in the direction of the plane crash site because we are working hard to salvage the black boxes.”

An oil ministry source said Sisi was referring to a robot submarine used mostly to maintain offshore oil rigs. It was not clear whether the vessel would be able to help locate the black boxes, or would be used in later stages of the operation.

Air crash investigation experts say the search teams have around 30 days to listen for pings sent out once every second from beacons attached to the two black boxes. At this stage of the search they would typically use acoustic hydrophones, bringing in more advanced robots later to scan the seabed and retrieve any objects once they have been found.

Separately, the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet said one of its patrol aircraft supporting the search had spotted more than 100 pieces of debris positively identified as having come from an aircraft, and passed the data to the Egyptian Navy.

EgyptAir flight 804 from Paris to Cairo vanished off radar screens early on Thursday as it entered Egyptian airspace over the Mediterranean. The 10 crew and 56 passengers included 30 Egyptian and 15 French nationals.

French investigators say that the plane sent a series of warnings indicating that smoke had been detected on board shortly before it disappeared.

The signals did not indicate what caused the smoke or fire, and aviation experts have not ruled out either deliberate sabotage or a technical fault, but they offered early clues as to what unfolded in the moments before the crash.

“Until now all scenarios are possible,” Sisi said in his first public remarks on the crash. “So please, it is very important that we do not talk and say there is a specific scenario.”

The crash was the third blow since October to hit Egypt’s travel industry, still reeling from political unrest following the 2011 uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak.

A suspected Islamic State bombing brought down a Russian airliner after it took off from Sharm al-Sheikh airport in late October, killing all 224 people on board, and an EgyptAir plane was hijacked in March by a man wearing a fake suicide belt.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Sharm al-Sheikh bombing within hours but a purported statement from the group’s spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, distributed on Saturday, made no mention of the crash.

ANGUISH OF RELATIVES

EgyptAir has told relatives of the victims that recovering and identifying bodies from the sea could take weeks, adding to the pain and uncertainty of grieving families.

Samar Ezzedine, 27 years old and newly wed, was one of the cabin crew on flight 804. Her mother Amal has sat in the lobby of a hotel overlooking Cairo Airport, still waiting for her daughter to come back.

“She is missing, who hosts a funeral for a missing person?” she murmured.

Samar’s aunt, Mona, said Amal was reluctant to go home or even move away from the hotel door. “She doesn’t want to believe it … I told her to switch off her phone, but she said: What if Samar calls?”

An EgyptAir union appealed to Sisi to allow death certificates to be issued for the victims, to avoid the usual five-year delay in the case of missing people which leaves relatives in a legal limbo, including over pensions.

In his speech on Sunday, Sisi said the investigation would not be over quickly, but promised it would be transparent.

“This could take a long time but no one can hide these things. As soon as the results are out, people will be informed,” he told ministers and parliamentarians in the port city of Damietta.

The October crash devastated Egyptian tourism, a main source of foreign exchange for a country of 80 million people.

Tourism revenue in the first three months of the year plunged by two thirds to $500 million from a year earlier, and the latest incident could crush hopes for a swift recovery.

Tourism Minister Yehia Rashed said Egypt faced a huge challenge winning back visitors. “The efforts that we need to put are maybe 10 times what we planned to put in place but we need to focus on our ability to drive business back to Egypt to change the image of Egypt,” he told Reuters.

“What we need to understand is this is an incident that could have taken place anywhere. Aviation incidents happen, unfortunately.”

(Additional reporting by Lin Noueihed, Abdelnasser Aboelfadl and Eric Knecht in Cairo, Tim Hepher in Paris; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Tom Heneghan, Jane Merriman and Kevin Liffey)