Tag Archives: Stabbing

Car ramming followed by stabbing rampage in South Korea

Rampage South Korea

Important Takeaways:

  • A man rammed a car into pedestrians before stabbing several people, injuring at least 13, just south of the South Korean capital, Seoul, authorities said Thursday
  • Five people were hit by the vehicle, and nine others were stabbed, according to police. Three were in critical condition as of early Friday local time.
  • “Unlike traditional crimes driven by personal resentment,” he said, the apparent attack was “in effect, an act of terrorism in that anyone can become a victim.”

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Six people including three children have been killed in kindergarten stabbing in China

China-Kindergarten-Stabbing

Mathew 24:12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.

Important Takeaways:

  • Police have called this a case of “intentional assault” but not elaborated on a possible motive.
  • The stabbings also fit in to a disturbingly familiar pattern. Firearms are banned in China but the country has seen a spate of knife attacks in recent years, although there was also one incident where the attacker used a chemical spray to injure a classroom of 50 children.
  • In most of these cases, the perpetrators are male and have expressed a grudge against society.
  • Fearing copycat attacks, Beijing is also not allowing state media to publish full details of Monday’s incident at the kindergarten.

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Children on playground targeted in knife attack

Mathew 24:12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.

Important Takeaways:

  • Four children wounded in Annecy knife attack
  • Four toddlers and two adults were stabbed in a knife attack in the tranquil French mountain town of Annecy on Thursday, and the government said the suspected assailant was a Syrian refugee.
  • Two of the children and one adult were in hospital in a life-threatening condition, while the other victims were less seriously hurt.
  • The local prosecutor leading the investigation said there was no indication that terrorism was the assailant’s motivation. He was under investigation for attempted murder.
  • The four children were just toddlers, aged between 22 months and three years, Annecy prosecutor Line Bonnet-Mathis told reporters.

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Las Vegas investigation ensues after journalist stabbed to death outside home

2 Timothy 3:1-5 “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

Important Takeaways:

  • Police search home of Democrat official in connection with stabbing of investigative journalist Jeff German
  • Clark County administrator Robert Telles lost an election following Jeff German’s reports
  • Officers entered the home of Clark County public administrator Robert Telles Wednesday morning, according to The Las Vegas Review-Journal. German had written extensively about the alleged hostile work environment Telles reportedly ran at the city office, as well as a reported inappropriate relationship with a staffer.
  • “The Clark County Public Administrator’s office has been mired in turmoil and internal dissension over the past two years, with allegations of emotional stress, bullying and favoritism leading to secret videotaping of the boss and a co-worker outside the office,” reads one of his articles, published in May.
  • Police have not stated that Telles is a suspect in German’s fatal stabbing. Telles’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox.

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New York Hanukkah machete attack suspect to face federal hate crime charges

(Reuters) – The man accused of stabbing at least five people in a machete rampage at the home of a Hasidic rabbi during a Hanukkah celebration is due to face federal hate crime charges in White Plains, New York, on Monday.

A federal grand jury indicted Grafton Thomas, 37, late last week with additional counts of hate crimes for the Dec. 28 stabbing of members of the Orthodox Jewish community in Monsey, New York, bringing the number of federal charges he faces to 10.

Each count carries a maximum prison term of life.

One of the victims, a 72-year-old man who suffered devastating machete blows to his head, arm and neck, is comatose and unlikely to recover, according to family members.

Federal prosecutors have said Thomas targeted his victims because of their Jewish faith. In a criminal complaint filed last month, they cited journals they seized from the suspect’s home containing references to Adolf Hitler, Nazi culture and the Black Hebrew Israelites movement, identified by experts in extremism as an anti-Jewish hate group.

Thomas also faces state charges for the attack, which his attorney, pointing to his client’s long history of mental illness, has said was likely an expression of psychosis rather than bigotry.

The attack in Monsey capped a string of incidents in which Jews have been physically attacked or accosted in the New York metropolitan area in recent weeks, including a shooting at a kosher supermarket in New Jersey that left two members of the Hasidic community dead.

One of the suspects in that attack had also expressed interest in the Black Hebrew Israelites. He died in the attack.

The most recent national numbers from Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism found 780 anti-Semitic incidents reported to or detected by the organization in the United States in the first half of 2019, compared to 785 incidents reported for the same period in 2018.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani; Editing by Scott Malone and Tom Brown)

Stabbed Brazilian front-runner Bolsonaro needs more surgery -hospital

FILE PHOTO: Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro reacts after being stabbed during a rally in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state, Brazil September 6, 2018.REUTERS/Raysa Campos Leite

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s front-running far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro is still in serious condition in intensive care and will need to undergo another major surgery, the hospital where he is being treated said in a written statement on Monday.

Bolsonaro, 63, was stabbed at a campaign rally on Thursday in an assassination attempt that plunged the presidential race into further confusion as it appears unlikely he will be able to resume campaigning before the Oct. 7 vote.

The medical bulletin issued by the Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo contrasted with the upbeat report on Sunday that said Bolsonaro’s health had improved markedly and that he had walked for a few minutes but was still receiving food intravenously.

The new report said his condition was still serious and he would need additional surgery since he has a colostomy bag that needs to be removed and the intestine perforated by the stabbing repaired.

There are no signs of infection, the bulletin added.

The knife attack against Bolsonaro further complicated the most unpredictable election in three decades, with Brazil’s most popular politician, jailed former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, banned from running due to a corruption conviction but keeping up a legal battle to try to overturn that ban.

Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has for years angered many Brazilians with extreme statements on race, gender, and sexual preference, but he is also seen by his many supporters as an outsider who can clean up a corrupt political system.

Police have a suspect in custody and say only that they are continuing the investigation and that no clear motive was yet known, though the assailant told police he stabbed Bolsonaro on Thursday on “orders from God.”

Surveys consistently give Bolsonaro, a member of the Social Liberal Party, around 22 percent in of voter support. However, those polls find he would lose to most rivals in the likely event of a runoff, which takes place if no candidate wins a majority in the first ballot.

Bolsonaro’s campaign managers hope that the stabbing will draw sympathy votes that will win him the presidency.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Sao Paulo and Pedro Fonseca in Rio de Janeiro; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Brazil presidential election thrown into chaos after front-runner stabbed

Flavio Bolsonaro, son of presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro leaves the Santa Casa hospital, where his father was hospitalized after being stabbed in Juiz de Fora, Brazil September 6, 2018. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes

By Brad Brooks and Gabriel Stargardter

SAO PAULO/JUIZ DE FORA, Brazil (Reuters) – Brazil’s presidential campaign was thrown into chaos on Friday as the far-right front-runner was in serious condition after he was stabbed at a rally, just a month before the vote, raising fears of increased violence in the wide-open race.

Congressman Bolsonaro has angered many Brazilians by saying he would encourage police to ramp up their killing of suspected drug gang members and armed criminals, but he has a devoted following among conservative voters.

FILE PHOTO: Presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro leaves an agribusiness fair in Esteio, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil August 29, 2018. REUTERS/Diego Vara/File photo

FILE PHOTO: Presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro leaves an agribusiness fair in Esteio, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil August 29, 2018. REUTERS/Diego Vara/File photo

He could need two months to fully recover from Thursday’s attack and will spend at least a week in the hospital, following the life-threatening injuries, doctors said.

Bolsonaro was flown from Juiz de Fora in Minas Gerais state Friday morning, and is now in the Sirio Libanes hospital in Sao Paulo, one of the nation’s elite institutions.

Dr. Luiz Henrique Borsato, who operated on the candidate, said the internal wounds were “grave” and “put the patient’s life at risk” but that he was stable early Friday. Doctors were worried about an infection since Bolsonaro’s intestines were perforated, he added.

The knife reached 12 cm (4.7 inches) inside his abdomen and the candidate lost 2 liters (4.2 pints) of blood, the family said.

Meanwhile, fears of a flare-up in violence following the stabbing cast a shadow over Brazil on Friday as the nation celebrated Independence Day with political rallies expected in hundreds of cities.

Bolsonaro leads polling scenarios for the first-round vote on Oct. 7, but loses to most rivals in simulated run-off votes, which would take place on Oct. 28 if no candidate wins a majority in the first balloting.

Some analysts forecast that Bolsonaro could get a boost from the attack, a gruesome example of the violence he rails against, especially as support for his leftists rivals is split among three candidates.

Others, however, question if a such a polemical politician will gain any sympathy from voters who do not already back him.

Speaking from his hospital bed in Juiz de Fora in an online video, the retired Army captain compared the pain at first to being hit by the ball in a soccer game.

People surround a man suspected of stabbing Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro (not pictured) as he was campaigning in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state, Brazil September 6, 2018. Felipe Couri / Minas Tribune / via REUTERS

People surround a man suspected of stabbing Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro (not pictured) as he was campaigning in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state, Brazil September 6, 2018. Felipe Couri / Minas Tribune / via REUTERS

“It was intolerable and it seemed like maybe something worse was happening,” he said, talking in a weak, raspy voice with a tube in his nose and monitors beeping nearby. “I was preparing for this sort of thing. You run risks.”

The attack on Bolsonaro, 63, is a twist in what was already Brazil’s most unpredictable election since the country’s return to democracy three decades ago. Scores of businessmen and politicians have been jailed in corruption investigations in recent years and alienated voters.

Imprisoned former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva would easily win the election, polls found, but he was barred from running because of his corruption conviction, scattering voter support among five main candidates.

Rival candidates called off campaign activities for Friday.

“YOU JUST ELECTED HIM PRESIDENT”

“I just want to send a message to the thugs who tried to ruin the life of a family man, a guy who is the hope for millions of Brazilians: You just elected him president. He will win in the first round,” Flavio Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro’s son, said on Friday.

His campaign could be hampered by not being able to hold street rallies. Under Brazil’s campaign laws, Bolsonaro’s tiny coalition has almost no campaign time on government-regulated candidate commercial blocs on television and radio. He must rely on social media and rallies around the country to drum up support.

Bolsonaro is running as the law-and-order candidate and has positioned himself as the anti-politician, though he has spent nearly three decades in Congress.

He has long espoused taking a radical stance on public security in Brazil, which has more homicides than any other country, according to United Nations statistics.

Bolsonaro, whose trademark pose at rallies is a “guns up” gesture holding both hands like pistols, has said he would encourage police to kill suspected drug gang members and other armed criminals with abandon.

He has openly praised Brazil’s military dictatorship and in the past said it should have killed more people.

Bolsonaro faces trial before the Supreme Court for speech that prosecutors said incited hate and rape. He has called the charges politically motivated.

His stabbing is the latest instance of political violence, which is particularly rampant at the local level. Earlier this year, Marielle Franco, a Rio city councilwoman who was an outspoken critic of police violence against slum residents, was assassinated.

Police video taken at a precinct and aired by TV Globo showed suspect Adelio Bispo de Oliveira telling police he had been ordered by God to carry out the attack.

One supporter camped outside Bolsonaro’s hospital room, Bruno Engler, 21, who is running for a Minas Gerais state congressional seat on Bolsonaro’s Social Liberal Party, said if he could, he would lynch the suspect.

“They call us on the right the intolerant, the violent ones, but those who are intolerant and violent are them,” Engler said, referring to leftist voters.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Sao Paulo and Gabriel Stargardter and Rodrigo Viga Gaier in Juiz de Fora; Writing by Brad Brooks and Alexandra Alper; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Jeffrey Benkoe)

London attacker took steroids before deadly rampage, inquest told

Police officers and forensics investigators and police officers work on Westminster Bridge the morning after an attack by a man driving a car and weilding a knife left five people dead and dozens injured, in London, Britain, March 23, 2017.

LONDON (Reuters) – The man who mowed down pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge before killing a police officer outside Britain’s parliament last year had taken steroids beforehand, a London court heard on Monday.

Last March Khalid Masood, 52, killed four people on the bridge before, armed with two carving knives, he stabbed to death an unarmed police officer in the grounds of parliament. He was shot dead at the scene.

It was the first of five attacks on Britain last year which police blamed on terrorism.

A submission to a pre-inquest hearing into the fatalities at London’s Old Bailey Court said there was evidence that Masood had taken anabolic steroids in the hours or days before his death.

“A more specialist pharmaceutical toxicologist … has been instructed to prepare a report addressing how steroid use may have affected Khalid Masood,” the submission by the inquiry’s lawyer Jonathan Hough said.

The hearing also heard from Gareth Patterson, a lawyer representing relatives of four of the victims, who lambasted tech firms over their stance on encryption and failing to remove radicalizing material from websites.

Patterson said families wanted answers about how Masood, who was known to the UK security service MI5, was radicalized and why shortly before his attack, he was able to share an extremist document via WhatsApp.

He said victims’ relatives could not understand “why it is that radicalizing material continues to be freely available on the internet”.

“We do not understand why it’s necessary for WhatsApp, Telegram and these sort of media applications to have end-to-end encryption,” he told the hearing at London’s Old Bailey court.

Patterson told Reuters following the hearing that he was “fed up” of prosecuting terrorism cases which featured encryption and particularly the WhatsApp messaging service.

“How many times do we have to have this?” he said.

The British government has been pressurizing companies to do more to remove extremist content and rein in encryption which they say allows terrorists and criminals to communicate without being monitored by police and spies, while also making it hard for the authorities to track them down.

However, it has met quiet resistance from tech leaders like Facebook, Google and Twitter and critics say ending encryption will weaken security for legitimate actions and open a back door for government snooping.

Samantha Leek, the British government’s lawyer, said the issues over encryption and radicalization were a matter of public policy and too wide for an inquest to consider.

Police say Masood had planned and carried out his attack alone, despite claims of responsibility from Islamic State, although a report in December confirmed he was known to MI5 for associating with extremists, particularly between 2010 and 2012, but not considered a threat.

Coroner Mark Lucraft said the inquest, which will begin in September, would seek to answer “obvious and understandable questions” the families might have.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)

Palestinian stabs Israeli in Jerusalem; anti-Trump protest flares in Beirut

A Palestinian demonstrator shouts during clashes with Israeli troops at a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, near the Jewish settlement of Beit El, near the West Bank city of Ramallah December 11, 2017.

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A Palestinian stabbed an Israeli security guard at Jerusalem’s main bus station on Sunday, police said, and violence flared near the U.S. Embassy in Beirut over U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Four days of street protests in the Palestinian territories over Trump’s announcement on Wednesday have largely died down, but his overturning of long-standing U.S. policy on Jerusalem — a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians — drew more Arab warnings of potential damage to prospects for Middle East peace.

“Our hope is that everything is calming down and that we are returning to a path of normal life without riots and without violence,” Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Army Radio.

But in Jerusalem, a security guard was in critical condition after a 24-year-old Palestinian man from the occupied West Bank stabbed him after approaching a metal detector at an entrance to the city’s central bus station, police said. The alleged assailant was taken into custody after a passer-by tackled him.

In public remarks on Sunday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, a frequent critic of Israel, called it an “invader state” and a “terror state”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who spoke at a news conference in Paris alongside French President Emmanuel Macron after the two leaders met, fired back:

“I’m not used to receiving lectures about morality from a leader who bombs Kurdish villages in his native Turkey, who jails journalists, helps Iran go around international sanctions and who helps terrorists, including in Gaza, kill innocent people,” Netanyahu said.

Macron told Netanyahu that he needed to make gestures to the Palestinians to break the impasse between the two sides.

“I asked Prime Minister Netanyahu to make some courageous gestures towards the Palestinians to get out of the current impasse,” Macron said, suggesting that a freeze of construction in settlements could be a first step.

Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in a 1967 war, to be occupied territory and say the status of the city should be decided at future Israeli-Palestinian talks. Israel says that all of Jerusalem is its capital, while Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state.

The Trump administration has said it is still committed to reviving Palestinian-Israeli talks that collapsed in 2014, but jettisoning old policies is necessary to break the deadlock.

Washington says it has not taken a position on Jerusalem’s final status or borders, but it is sensible to recognize that any future peace deal will have Israel’s capital in the city.

The United States was “as committed to the peace process as we’ve ever been”, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Sunday. Trump “didn’t talk about boundaries, he didn’t talk about borders… Because the final status of Jerusalem is between the Palestinians and the Israelis. It’s not for the Americans to decide.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will not meet U.S. Vice President Mike Pence during his visit to the region, Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki said on Saturday. The White House said on Sunday that decision was unfortunate and Pence looked forward to seeing Netanyahu and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

“It’s unfortunate that the Palestinian Authority is walking away again from an opportunity to discuss the future of the region,” said Jarrod Agen, a spokesman for Pence.

Netanyahu reacted to critics in a statement before talks with Macron, to be followed by a meeting with European foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.

“I hear (from Europe) voices of condemnation over President Trump’s historic announcement, but I have not heard any condemnation for the rocket firing against Israel that has come (after the announcement) and the awful incitement against us,” Netanyahu said.

A Palestinian protester throws back a gas canister fired by Israeli forces during a protest in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, December 10, 2017. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

DEMONSTRATIONS

In Beirut, Lebanese security forces fired tear gas and water cannons at protesters, some of them waving Palestinian flags, near the U.S. Embassy.

Demonstrators set fires in the street, torched U.S. and Israeli flags and threw projectiles towards security forces that had barricaded the main road to the complex.

In the Moroccan capital, Rabat, tens of thousands of protesters marched down the city’s main thoroughfare chanting slogans including, “The people want to liberate Palestine” and “Death to Israel, enemy of the people and provoker of wars.”

Waving Palestinian flags and holding up pictures of Jerusalem, they expressed anger at the “betrayal” by Arab governments perceived to have backed Trump’s move.

In the Indonesian capital Jakarta, thousands protested outside the U.S. embassy, many waving banners saying “Palestine is in our hearts”.

Maliki has said the Palestinians will be looking for a new peace talks broker instead of the United States and would seek a United Nations Security Council resolution over Trump’s decision.

Arab foreign ministers who met in Cairo on Saturday urged the United States to abandon its decision on Jerusalem and said the move would spur violence throughout the region.

Echoing that view, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan, the de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates, said the U.S. move “could throw a lifebuoy to terrorist and armed groups, which have begun to lose ground” in the Middle East.

GAZA TUNNEL

Along Israel’s tense frontier with the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military on Sunday destroyed what it described as a “significant” cross-border attack tunnel dug by the enclave’s dominant Islamist group, Hamas.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas on the demolition, which came as Palestinian factions tried to meet Sunday’s deadline for an Egyptian-mediated handover of Gaza by Hamas to Western-backed President Abbas after a decade’s schism.

Pre-dawn Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Saturday killed two Palestinian gunmen after militants fired rockets from the area into Israel on Friday.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem, John Irish in Paris, Tom Perry in Beirut, Agustinus Beo Da Costa in Jakarta, Sami Aboudi in Dubai, Doina Chiacu in Washington, and Jeff Mason in West Palm Beach, Florida; Editing by Peter Graff and Mary Milliken)

Finnish stabbings treated as terror, suspect ‘targeted women’: police

Finnish stabbings treated as terror, suspect 'targeted women': police

By Jussi Rosendahl and Tuomas Forsell

HELSINKI/TURKU, Finland (Reuters) – Finnish police said on Saturday that an 18-year-old Moroccan man arrested after knife attacks that killed two people in the city of Turku appeared to have specifically targeted women and that the spree was being treated as terrorism-related.

The suspect arrested on Friday after being shot in the leg by police had arrived in Finland last year, they said, adding they later arrested four other Moroccan men over possible links to him.

“Due to information received during the night, the Turku stabbings are now being investigated as murders with terrorist intent,” Crista Granroth from the National Bureau of Investigation told a news conference.

While the identity of the victims has not been disclosed by authorities, police said the attacker appeared to have targeted women during the stabbing spree in downtown Turku, a city of just under 200,000 people in southwest Finland.

“It seems that the suspect chose women as his targets, because the men who were wounded were injured when they tried to help, or prevent the attacks,” Granroth said.

Both of those killed in the attack were women, as well as six of the eight wounded, she added. The two who died were Finns and an Italian and two Swedish citizens were among the injured.

Finnish broadcaster MTV, citing an unnamed source, said the main suspect had been denied asylum in Finland. The police said only that he been “part of the asylum process”.

SCREAMING

“First thing we heard was a young woman, screaming like crazy. I thought it’s just kids having fun … but then people started to move around and I saw a man with a knife in his hand, stabbing a woman,” said Laura Laine, who was sitting in a cafe during one of the attacks.

“Then a person ran towards us shouting ‘He has a knife’, and everybody from the terrace ran inside. Next, a woman came in to the cafe. She was crying hysterically, down on her knees, saying someone’s neck has been slashed open.”

Four of the wounded were still in hospital, three of them in intensive care, while the other injured persons would be sent home on Saturday, the hospital said.

Local media said the police raided an apartment in the eastern Turku suburb of Varissuo, which is home to a large immigrant population, and located about seven kilometers from the market square where the attacks took place.

Flags were at half mast on Saturday across Finland, whose Security Intelligence Service (SIS) raised the terrorism threat level in June to ‘elevated’ from ‘low’, saying it had become aware of terrorism-related plans.

Leaders of Turku’s Iraqi and Syrian community condemned the attacks and said they would hold a rally of solidarity in the city’s main square, but canceled the plan due to security concerns.

An anti-immigration group was planning a demonstration in Helsinki.

“Terrorists want to pit people against each other. We will not let this happen. Finnish society will not be defeated by fear or hatred,” Interior Minister Paula Risikko said on Twitter.

On Thursday, a suspected Islamist militant drove a van into crowds in Barcelona in Spain, killing 13 people and wounding scores of others.

Finnish police said they were looking into any possible links between the Finnish stabbings and the attack in Spain and that they had issued an international arrest warrant for a sixth Moroccan national.

(Additional reporting by Lefteris Karagiannopoulos; Writing by Jussi Rosendahl and Niklas Pollard; Editing by Niklas Pollard and Andrew Bolton)