Thread: Gunman kills two U.S. soldiers at Frankfurt airport

Gunman kills two U.S. soldiers at Frankfurt airport

25 mins ago

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – A gunman shot dead two U.S. soldiers and injured two people seriously in a U.S. Army bus at Frankfurt airport Wednesday, said Boris Rhein, interior minister for the state of Hesse.

The gunman was apparently a Kosovo national, he said.

Security round the airport has been tightened and an investigation is under way, Rhein said.

"Whether the incident was linked to terrorism I cannot say at this stage," he told journalists.

A spokesman for Frankfurt airport operator Fraport said the shooting took place in a U.S. Army bus in front of Terminal 2.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking in Berlin, confirmed the deaths.

"We don't know the details but I would like to express how upset I am. We have to do everything we can to find out what happened," she told a joint news conference with Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates.

The U.S. Army and Air Force and German police at the airport were not immediately available for comment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110302/wl_ ... y_shooting

I heard on FOX XM that he yelled "Allah Akbar" as he shot them.

2 U.S. airmen shot dead at airport in Germany
2 others wounded after attack on Air Force bus; suspect said to be German-born Muslim



Police investigate the scene after a gunman fired shots at U.S. Air Force service members on this bus outside Germany's Frankfurt Airport on Wednesday.

-FRANKFURT, Germany — A gunman fired at U.S. Air Force personnel on a bus outside Frankfurt airport Wednesday, killing two airmen and wounding two others before being taken into custody, authorities said.

The suspect is a German-born devout Muslim who works at the airport, his uncle told The Associated Press.

The attack came as the bus sat outside Terminal 2 at the airport, according to Frankfurt police spokesman Manfred Fuellhardt.

The bus driver and a passenger were killed, and one person suffered serious wounds and another light injuries, Fuellhardt said.

U.S. Air Force Europe said in a statement that all four victims were U.S. airmen assigned to Europe units. Their names were not immediately released.

The bus was transporting a Security Forces team assigned to RAF Lakenheath, a U.K. base in eastern England, from the airport to Ramstein Air Force Base, the statement said. The airmen were on their way to support overseas contingency operations.

Lakenheath is home to the 48th Fighter Wing, the United States' only F-15 fighter wing. Its website says the base employs some 4,500 active-duty military members, as well as 2,000 British and U.S. civilians.

The suspected gunman was identified as Arid Uka. In an interview with The Associated Press in Kosovo, the suspect's uncle, 70-year-old Rexhep Uka, said his nephew was born and raised in Germany after his parents moved there from Kosovo about 40 years ago.

The uncle said Arid Uka is a pious Muslim whose grandfather was a religious leader at a mosque in the village of Zhabar, near Mitrovica, Kosovo.

Murat Uka, who identified himself as the alleged shooter's father, said the only thing he knew about his son was that he hadn't turned up at work on Wednesday.

The Frankfurt airport refused to comment on whether the suspect worked there.

In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her sympathies were with the victims and their families, and pledged that Germany would do everything in its power to investigate the crime.

"It is a terrible event," she said.

In Washington, President Barack Obama said he was "saddened and outraged" by the shooting. The president said the U.S. would "spare no effort" in finding out how the act took place.

At the Frankfurt airport, taxi cab driver Salimi Seraidon said he was sitting at a stand about 200 yards away when the attack took place. He said it was over quickly as police rushed onto the scene.

"We just heard the shots," he said.

Boris Rhein, interior minister for the German state of Hesse, said security around the airport has been tightened. "Whether the incident was linked to terrorism I cannot say at this stage," he told journalists.

Still, a member of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Patrick Meehan, said in Washington that it looked like a terrorist attack. The chairman of the subcommittee that focuses on terrorism and intelligence added he did not have all the facts about the shooting yet and was still being briefed.

Kosovo remained part of Serbia amid the collapse of former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, but a struggle for independence by ethnic Albanians there eventually led to the Kosovo war in 1998. The bloodshed was halted only in 1999 when NATO stepped in and bombed Serbia, followed by the deployment of peacekeepers.

The NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) still has some 8,700 troops there provided by 32 nations, including the U.S. and Germany.

The northern town of Mitrovca is best known for the ongoing ethnic division between majority ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs. The former mining town, however, has also been the focus of reports that it breeds radical Islamic extremists.

In the past Western intelligence reports have said the region could be an ideal recruitment ground for the so-called "white al-Qaida" — Muslims with Western features who could easily blend into European or U.S. cities and execute terrorist attacks.

The American forces in Germany have been targeted in attacks in the past, including a 1986 bombing at a disco in then-West Berlin that was known to be frequented by U.S. servicemen. Two soldiers and one civilian were killed, and 230 others injured in that attack, which a Berlin court in 2001 ruled was organized by the Libyan secret service and aided by the Libyan Embassy in then-communist East Berlin.

A leftist terrorist group, the Red Army Faction, was also responsible for a string of attacks on Americans in the 1970s and 1980s before the group was disbanded in 1998.

More recently, German police thwarted a plot in 2007 to attack U.S. facilities by members of the extremist Islamic Jihad Union. Four men had planning to attack American soldiers and citizens at facilities including the U.S. Air Force's Ramstein base in Germany but were caught before they could carry out the plot.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41868361

Suspect in custody after allegedly killing two U.S. airmen in attack after ‘Allah Akbar’ shout

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2 ... tml?r=news

Originally Posted by Newmexican

Suspect in custody after allegedly killing two U.S. airmen in attack after ‘Allah Akbar’ shout

SO, any doubt this is terrorism !?

The only doubts that I heard were from mealy mouthed politicians trying to do damage control.