Tag Archives: Bombing

Separate bomb attacks kill at least 22 in Afghanistan

Officials cleaning the site of the bombing June 20 2016

By Mirwais Harooni

KABUL (Reuters) – More than 20 people were killed in separate bomb attacks in Afghanistan on Monday, including at least 14 when a suicide bomber struck a minibus carrying Nepali security contractors in the capital Kabul, officials said.

A Reuters witness saw several apparently dead victims and at least two wounded being carried out of the remains of a yellow bus after the suicide bomber struck the vehicle in the capital.

Hours later, a bomb planted in a motorbike killed at least eight civilians and wounded another 18 in a crowded market in the northern province of Badakhshan, said provincial government spokesman Naveed Frotan. The casualty count could rise, he said.

The attacks are the latest in a surge of violence that highlights the challenges faced by the government in Kabul and its Western backers as Washington considers whether to delay plans to cut the number of its troops in Afghanistan.

Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said on Twitter that 14 people had been killed and eight wounded in the attack in Kabul. Police were working to identify the victims, he said.

The casualties appeared to include Afghan civilians and Nepali security contractors, Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said, after police and emergency vehicles surrounded the scene in the Banae district in the east of the city.

He said the suicide bomber had waited near a compound housing the security contractors and struck as the vehicle moved through early morning traffic. Besides the bus passengers, several people in an adjacent market were also wounded in the attack during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the Kabul attack in a statement from the Islamist group’s main spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, on Twitter. However it denied responsibility for the attack in Badakhshan.

Islamic State, which is bitterly opposed by the Taliban, said it carried out the Kabul attack but Zabihullah Mujahid dismissed the claim as “rubbish”.

“By organizing this attack, we wanted to show Americans and NATO military officials that we can conduct attacks wherever, and whenever, we want,” the Taliban spokesman said.

The Nepal government was still working through its embassy in Pakistan, which also oversees Afghanistan, to verify reports that its citizens were involved in the attack, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bharat Paudel said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent his condolences to his two South Asian neighbors after the attack.

“We strongly condemn the horrible tragedy in Kabul. Our deep condolences to people and governments of Afghanistan and Nepal on loss of innocent lives,” Modi said on Twitter.

Another explosion in Kabul later on Monday morning wounded a provincial council member and at least three of his bodyguards, Kabul police spokesman Basir Mujahid said. It was thought a bomb had been attached to the lawmaker’s car, he said.

The attacks underlined how serious the security threat facing Afghanistan remains since former Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a U.S. drone strike last month and was replaced by Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.

The blasts follow a deadly suicide attack on a bus carrying justice ministry staff near Kabul last month and a separate attack on a court in the central city of Ghazni on June 1.

The Taliban claimed both those attacks in revenge for the execution of six Taliban prisoners.

(Reporting by Mirwais Harooni and Hamid Shalizi; Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in KATHMANDU and Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Paul Tait and Clarence Fernandez)

Car bomb targeting police kills 11, wounds 36 in Instanbul

Fire engines stand beside a Turkish police bus which was targeted in a bomb attack in a central Istanbul district

By Humeyra Pamuk and Osman Orsal

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A car bomb ripped through a police bus in central Istanbul during the morning rush hour on Tuesday, killing 11 people and wounding 36 near the main tourist district, a major university and the mayor’s office.

The car was detonated as police buses passed, Istanbul Governor Vasip Sahin told reporters, in the fourth major bombing in Turkey’s biggest city this year.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Kurdish militants have staged similar attacks on the security forces before, including one last month in Istanbul.

Security concerns were already hitting tourism and investor confidence. Wars in neighboring Syria and Iraq have fostered a home-grown Islamic State network blamed for a series of suicide bombings, while militants from the largely Kurdish southeast have increasingly struck in cities further afield.

President Tayyip Erdogan vowed the NATO member’s fight against terrorism would go on, describing the attack on officers whose jobs were to protect others as “unforgivable”.

“We will continue our fight against these terrorists until the end, tirelessly and fearlessly,” he told reporters after visiting some of the injured in a hospital near the blast site.

Sahin said the dead included seven police officers and four civilians and that the attack had targeted vehicles carrying members of a riot police unit. Three of the 36 wounded were in critical condition, he said.

The blast hit the Vezneciler district, between the headquarters of the local municipality and the campus of Istanbul University, not far from the city’s historic heart. It shattered windows in shops and a mosque and scattered debris over nearby streets.

“There was a loud bang, we thought it was lightning but right at that second the windows of the shop came down. It was extremely scary,” said Cevher, a shopkeeper who declined to give his surname. The blast was strong enough to topple all the goods from the shelves of his store.

The police bus that appeared to have borne the brunt of the explosion was tipped onto its roof on the side of the road. A second police bus was also damaged. The charred wreckage of several other vehicles lined the street.

GUNSHOTS

Several witness reported hearing gunshots, although there was confusion as to whether attackers had opened fire or whether police officers had been trying to protect colleagues.

“We were told that it was police trying to keep people away from the blast scene,” said Mustafa Celik, 51, who owns a tourism agency in a backstreet near the blast site. He likened the impact of the explosion to an earthquake.

“I felt the pressure as if the ground beneath me moved. I’ve never felt anything this powerful before,” he told Reuters.

U.S. Ambassador John Bass condemned the “heinous” attack and said on Twitter the United States stood “shoulder to shoulder” with Turkey in the fight against terrorism.

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.

That has hit tourism in a nation whose Aegean and Mediterranean beaches usually lure droves of European and Russian holidaymakers. Russians stopped coming after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane over Syria last November.

The number of foreign visitors to Turkey fell by 28 percent in April, the biggest drop in 17 years.

“Business hasn’t been very good anyway. We’re now expecting fast check-outs and we think it will get worse,” said Kerem Tataroglu, general manager of the Zurich Hotel, less than 300 meters from where Tuesday’s blast happened.

While attacks by Islamic State have tended to draw more attention in the West, Turkey is equally concerned by the rise in attacks by Kurdish militants who had previously concentrated for the most part on the southeast.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged an armed insurgency against the state since 1984, claimed responsibility for a May 12 car bomb attack in Istanbul that wounded seven people. In that attack, a parked car was also blown up as a bus carrying security force personnel passed by.

(Additional reporting by Murat Sezer, Ayla Jean Yackley, Ece Toksabay; Writing by Daren Butler and David Dolan; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Andrew Heavens)

Syrian government forces battle of rebels near Aleppo

A general view shows a damaged street with sandbags used as barriers in Aleppo's Saif al-Dawla district, Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian government forces and their allies clashed with insurgents near Aleppo on Monday and warplanes launched more raids around a strategic town Islamist rebels seized last week, a monitoring group said.

The capture of Khan Touman was a rare setback for government forces in Aleppo province in recent months, and for allied Iranian troops who suffered heavy losses in the fighting.

Warplanes continued to strike around the town on Monday, and had carried out more than 90 raids in the area since Sunday morning, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Al Manar television, run by Damascus’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah, said troops had destroyed a tank belonging to insurgents and killed some its occupants.

Khan Touman lies just southwest of Aleppo city, which is one of the biggest strategic prizes in a war now in its sixth year, and has been divided into government and rebel-held zones through much of the conflict.

Russia’s military intervention last September has helped President Bashar al-Assad reverse some rebel gains in the west of the country, including in Aleppo province.

The Observatory said warplanes struck rebel-held areas of the city early on Monday, and rebels fired shells into government-held neighborhoods, despite a Russian-announced extension of a truce encompassing the city of Aleppo.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, hosting a meeting of Assad’s opponents in Paris, said Syrian government forces and their allies had bombarded hospitals and refugee camps.

“It is not Daesh (Islamic State) that is being attacked in Aleppo, it is the moderate opposition,” he said.

Ayrault said Monday’s meeting would call on Russia to put pressure on Assad to stop the attacks, adding that humanitarian aid must be allowed to reach those in need.

“Talks must resume, negotiations are the only solution,” he said on radio RTL, ahead of a meeting of ministers from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Britain. Also attending was Riad Hijab, chief coordinator of the main Syrian opposition negotiating group.

The surge in bloodshed in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the civil war, wrecked a February “cessation of hostilities” agreement sponsored by Washington and Moscow. The deal excluded Islamic State and al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front.

Peace talks in Geneva between government delegates and opposition figures, including representatives from rebel groups, broke up last month without significant progress.

(Reporting by John Davison in Beirut and Geert De Clercq in Paris; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Air strikes on Syrian camp kill 28 near Turkish border

A boy carries his belongings at a site hit by what activists said was a barrel bomb dropped by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo's al-Fardous district

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) – Air strikes on a camp housing Syrians uprooted by war killed 28 people near the Turkish border on Thursday, a monitoring group said, and fighting raged in parts of northern Syria despite a temporary deal to cease hostilities in the city of Aleppo.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the dead included women and children and the death toll from the air strikes, which hit a camp for internally displaced people near the town of Sarmada, was likely to rise.

Sarmada lies about 30 km (20 miles) west of the city of Aleppo, where a cessation of hostilities brokered by Russia and the United States had brought a measure of relief on Thursday. But fighting continued nearby and President Bashar al-Assad said he still sought total victory over rebels in Syria.

Syrian state media said the army would abide by a “regime of calm” in the city that came into effect at 1 a.m. (6.00 p.m. ET on Wednesday) for 48 hours, after two weeks of death and destruction.

The army blamed Islamist insurgents for violating the agreement overnight by what it called indiscriminate shelling of some government-held residential areas of divided Aleppo. Residents said the violence had eased by morning and more shops had opened up.

Heavy fighting was reported in the southern Aleppo countryside near the town of Khan Touman, where al Qaeda’s Syrian branch Nusra Front is dug in close to a stronghold of Iranian-backed militias, a rebel source said.

Government forces carried out air attacks on the area and rebels were attacking government positions around the town, pro-Syrian government television channel Al-Mayadeen and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Pro-opposition media said an Islamist insurgent carried out a suicide bomb attack against government positions in Khan Touman.

A TV station controlled by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the Syrian army, said the army used a guided missile to destroy a suicide car bomb before it reached its target in that area.

Elsewhere in Syria, fighting persisted. Islamic State militants captured the Shaer gas field in the east of the country, the first gain for the jihadists in the Palmyra desert area since they lost the ancient city in March, according to rebel sources and a monitor.

Amaq, an IS-affiliated news agency, said Islamic State militants killed at least 30 Syrian troops stationed at Shaer and seized heavy weapons, tanks and missiles.

Russian war jets were also reported to have struck militant hideouts in the town of Sukhna in the same Palmyra desert area.

“FINAL VICTORY”

Assad said he would accept nothing less than an outright victory in the five-year-old conflict against rebels across Syria, state media reported.

In a telegram to Russian President Vladimir Putin thanking Moscow for its military support, Assad said the army was set on “attaining final victory” and “crushing the aggression”.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least one person was killed overnight in rebel shelling of the Midan neighborhood on the government-held side of Aleppo, which was Syria’s commercial hub and largest city before the war.

Twenty rockets fell on government-held parts of Aleppo on Thursday, state media said.

But a resident of the rebel-held eastern part of the city said that although warplanes flew overnight, there were none of the intense raids seen during the past 10 days of air strikes.

People in several districts ventured onto the streets where more shops than normal had opened, the resident of al Shaar neighborhood said.

Another resident said civilians in several districts sensed a general trend toward calm. “From last night it was positive and my wife went out to shop and shops opened and people breathed. We did not hear the shelling and bombing we had gotten accustomed to,” Sameh Tutunji, a merchant said.

A rebel source also said that despite intermittent firing across the city’s main front lines, fighting had subsided and no army shelling of residential areas had been heard.

“Although we’re seeing less fighting today, the massive onslaught of violence over these past two weeks would make almost anything look like improvement,” the North Syria Director for aid organization Mercy Corps Xavier Tissier said.

“We aren’t going to celebrate a temporary break in targeted attacks on civilians and aid workers. The cessation of hostilities must hold for the long term,” Tissier said.

Rebels also said government helicopters dropped barrel bombs on rebel-held Dahyat al-Rashdeen al Junobi, northwest of Aleppo, and near the Jamiyat al Zahraa area, which saw a rebel ground assault pushed back on Wednesday.

The recent surge in bloodshed in Aleppo had wrecked a February cessation of hostilities agreement sponsored by Washington and Moscow, backers of the rival sides. The truce excluded Islamic State and the Nusra Front.

A spokesman for the mainstream opposition said the Saudi-based High Negotiations Committee (HNC) supported the deal but wanted the truce to cover all of Syria, not just Aleppo. It accused the government of violating it.

Syria’s foreign ministry said in response to today’s fighting: “The criminal violations of the regime of calm in Aleppo reveal without a doubt the true face of the armed terrorist groups supported by Turkey, Saudi, Qatar and other states, and that they only want blood and fire for Aleppo without caring if they kill Syrians and destroy their country.”

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by Dominic Evans)

U.S. military punishes 16 over 2015 Afghan hospital bombing

Hospital beds lay in the Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan

By Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military will announce on Friday that has it taken disciplinary action against 16 service members over a deadly Oct. 3 air strike in Afghanistan that destroyed a hospital run by the international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, U.S. officials told Reuters.

The disclosure of the nonjudicial punishments will come during the release of the findings of a U.S. military investigation into the incident, which will broadly conclude that the strike was a tragic mistake, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

That finding is consistent with the results of a preliminary investigation released by the U.S. military in November, when commanders stressed that American forces did not intentionally target the hospital.

Instead, General John Campbell, who was then head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, described a series of blunders that allowed the American forces to target the hospital, even though it was on a no-strike list.

MSF, known as Doctors Without Borders in English, has in the past publicly cast doubt on the idea that the strike could have been a mistake.

Forty-two people were killed in the incident and 37 were wounded as American forces helped Afghans repel Taliban insurgents from the city of Kunduz last year.

One general was among those singled out for disciplinary action, the officials said. The nonjudicial punishments include letters of reprimand, which could have a career-ending effect on the service members involved.

“These people are not promotable,” said one U.S. official.

According to the initial U.S. investigation, U.S. forces had meant to target a different building in the city and were led off-track by a technical error in their aircraft’s mapping system that initially directed them to an empty field.

The U.S. forces then looked for a target that was visually similar to the one they had originally sought, the former National Directorate of Security headquarters in Kunduz, which they believed was occupied by insurgents.

The Taliban’s brief capture of the Kunduz provincial capital was arguably the biggest victory for the militants in the 15-year war since they were toppled by U.S.-led forces in late 2001.

Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since the departure of most foreign combat troops in 2014.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Bernard Orr and James Dalgleish)

Aleppo Death toll mounts; rescue workers killed

Residents and civil defence members inspect a damaged building after an airstrike on the rebel-held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Attacks by government forces and rebels killed at least 30 people, including eight children, in the last 24 hours in Aleppo, a city seeing some of the worst of a renewed escalation in the Syrian war, a monitoring group said.

Intensified fighting has all but destroyed a partial ceasefire that started at the end of February, with U.N.-led peace talks in disarray.

In Aleppo, divided between areas controlled by the government and by rebels, 19 people were killed by rebel shelling and 11 were killed by government air strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

That adds to another 60 people killed over the weekend in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war, according to the Observatory. Air strikes were also reported in rebel-held areas near Damascus and in Hama province on Tuesday.

In a separate incident west of Aleppo, five Civil Defence workers – first responders in opposition-held territory where medical infrastructure has all but broken down – were killed by air strikes and a rocket attack on their centre.

The Observatory and Civil Defence colleagues said the attack appeared to have deliberately targeted the rescue workers in the town of Atareb, some 25 km (15 miles) west of Aleppo.

“The targeting was very precise,” Radi Saad, a Civil Defence worker, told Reuters.

“They were in the centre and ready to respond. When they heard warplanes in the area they did not think they would be the target.” Two people were seriously wounded and ambulances and cars belonging to doctors were destroyed, another Civil Defence member, Ahmad Sheikho, said.

It was unclear whether Syrian or Russian warplanes had launched the raids. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.

Each side accuses the other of targeting civilian areas in the five-year-old war that has killed more than 250,000 people.

A Syrian military source said the army would “respond firmly” against rebels attacking government-held parts of Aleppo. State news agency SANA said what it called terrorist groups, including the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, had shelled those neighborhoods.

In the north of Aleppo, insurgents resumed bombardment of a Kurdish-controlled neighborhood, Sheikh Maqsoud, according to the Kurdish YPG militia.

“Civilian areas were shelled at random,” the YPG said.

The YPG and its allies have been battling rebels, including groups backed via Turkey by states opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, for several months near Aleppo and close to the Turkish border.

Rebels accuse the YPG of collaborating with the government in trying to stop people using the only road into opposition-held Aleppo, something the YPG denies.

Turkey sees the YPG as a terrorist group and is concerned at moves by Kurdish forces to expand their control along the Syrian-Turkish border, where they already hold an uninterrupted 400 km (250 mile) stretch.

(Reporting by John Davison; additional reporting by Tom Perry and Marwan Makdesi in Damascus; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Islamic State claims central Baghdad bombing

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The hardline Sunni militant group Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on Tuesday morning in central Baghdad that police said killed three people and wounded 27.

The blast occurred near a gathering of workers in Tayaran Square, about a kilometer from a sit-in held by supporters of influential Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to demand political reforms.

Islamic State, which claimed responsibility in an online statement, also claimed a suicide bombing last Friday that killed 26 people at an amateur soccer game in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad.

At least 60 people were killed earlier this month in an attack further south, in Hilla, when an explosives-laden fuel tanker slammed into an Iraqi security checkpoint.

An apparent escalation of bombings targeting areas outside Islamic State’s primary control in northern and western Iraq suggests that Iraqi government forces may be stretched thin after recent gains against the group.

Analysts in Europe have interpreted recent attacks there, such as last week’s bombings in Brussels or the killings in Paris last November, as a sign that Islamic State was expanding its field of action in response to setbacks in Iraq and Syria.

But Baghdad analysts say the group has long staged indiscriminate suicide bombings and see these attacks as a continuation of that tactic.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Al Shabaab leading suspect in Somalia plane bombing, U.S. government sources say

MOGADISHU/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Investigators suspect the Al Shabaab militant group was behind a likely bomb blast that forced an Airbus A321 into an emergency landing this week in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, U.S. government sources said Wednesday.

One U.S. government source said investigators believe the Islamic militant group Al Shabaab perpetrated the attack. However, officials said that there had been no claim of responsibility for the attack.

One man was killed by the blast on Tuesday on the Daallo Airlines plane, officials said. Local authorities north of Mogadishu said the body of a man, believed to have been sucked out through the hole in the fuselage made by the blast, was found in their area.

Two U.S. government sources said on Wednesday that initial forensic testing had detected possible traces of the explosive TNT on the aircraft. But one official cautioned that such tests have a high false-positive rate, and further tests are under way.

U.S. government sources said, however, that as the investigation has proceeded, investigators are increasingly convinced that some kind of bomb did explode on the plane.

There was no immediate comment from Al Shabaab, a Somali Islamist group that has waged an insurgency against the Western-backed Somalia government. It has carried out regular attacks on officials, government offices and civilian sites.

Daallo Airlines, which did not refer to a blast, said on its website that the “incident” that caused a hole in the fuselage happened 15 minutes into the flight.

“Pilots managed to land the aircraft back (in) Mogadishu Airport safely and without any further incident. All passengers, except one, disembarked safely,” it said, adding there was an investigation into “the cause of one missing passenger.”

Two passengers were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, it added.

“The investigation goes on,” Somali civil aviation director Abdiwahid Omar said on the state radio website.

Local authorities said the body of a passenger was found in the Balcad area, about 30 km (19 miles) north of Mogadishu.

A police officer at Mogadishu airport said the body of the 55-year-old man was being brought to the capital. “He dropped when the explosion occurred in the plane,” the officer said.

Daallo Airlines, the national carrier of the tiny Horn of Africa country of Djibouti, had previously said the plane had 74 passengers on board.

Mohamed Hussein, an agent for Daallo, told Reuters on Tuesday that a “fire had erupted” on the flight. Images showed the plane with a hole in the fuselage over one wing.

A source familiar with the investigation said flammable objects are not usually put in that place in an aircraft.

Some reports suggested an oxygen bottle might have been involved, but safety experts say such bottles usually catch fire rather than explode. Photographs did not show significant damage to overhead panels where such bottles are usually kept.

Experts have praised the actions of the crew in landing the plane with so few casualties.

Daallo flies to several destinations in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, according to its website.

(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel in Washington and Tim Hepher in Paris; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Bernard Orr)

Explosion in Nigerian Market Kills 32, Wounds 80; Boko Haram Suspected

Tuesday night a blast struck a market in the northeastern Nigerian city of Yola, killing 32 people and wounding 80 others according to the Red Cross and national Emergency Management Agency.  The explosion struck after dark at a fruit and vegetable market beside a main road.  

There has not been an immediate claim for the blast but it has major characteristics of the Islamist group Boko Haram which has killed thousands of people over the last six years in it’s campaign to turn Nigeria into a strict Islamic state.  

According to many news reports, Tuesday night’s bombings break a three-week break in violence after a string of suicide attacks resulted in twin explosions in mosques in two northeastern cities that killed 42 people and wounded more than 100 on Oct. 23.

One of the mosques attacked was in Yola, capital of Adamawa state, where the insurgents struck again. It was the third suicide bombing in as many months in a city overflowing with some of the 2.3 million refugees driven from their homes by the Islamic uprising.

The militants have focused attacks on markets, bus stations and places of worship, as well as hit-and-run attacks on villages since losing most of the territory they took over earlier this year to the Nigerian army.  

In a report by CBS news, Nigeria’s military has reported foiling several suicide bombers recently, and killing and capturing insurgents as it destroys Boko Haram camps in air raids and ground attacks.

“The enemies of humanity will never win. Hand in hand, we will rid our land of terrorism,” Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari said in a tweet.

Russia Promises Revenge on Bombing of Plane

The explosion of a Russian jetliner that took off from Sinai was the result of a terrorist attack according to Russia’s chief intelligence officer, Alexander Bortnikov.  The mid-air explosion of  the Russian jetliner over the Sinai desert last month  killed all 224 people on board .“Traces of foreign explosives” were found on debris from the Airbus plane, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov told Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin vowed to step up his country’s military campaign against Islamist militants in Syria

According to Reuters, Putin ordered the Russian navy in the eastern Mediterranean to coordinate its actions on the sea and in the air with the French navy, after the Kremlin used long-range bombers and cruise missiles in Syria and announced it would expand its strike force by 37 planes.

During a Kremlin meeting broadcasted on Tuesday, Putin addressed the Russian people.  

“The murder of our people in Sinai is among the bloodiest crimes in terms of victims. We will not wipe away the tears from our soul and hearts. This will stay with us forever but will not stop us finding and punishing the criminals.”

Putin then promised, “We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them. Our air force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued. It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that retribution is inevitable.”

The FSB security service announced a bounty of $50 million to find those responsible and said that award would be paid out for information that helps detain persons who blew up the Russian plane in Egypt.

According to several news reports, Egyptian authorities have detained two employees of Sharm al-Sheikh airport, where the downed plane originated, for questioning, two security officials and an airport employee said on Tuesday.

Most of the A321 passengers on the doomed plane were Russian tourists flying home from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.