Tag Archives: Death

Christian family shot dead in southwestern Pakistan

Christian cross-

By Gul Yousafzai

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) – Four members of a Christian family were gunned down in southwestern Pakistan on Monday, police said, in the latest attack on the minority community.

The family was traveling in a rickshaw when armed men on a motorcycle intercepted them and opened fire in Quetta city, the capital of Baluchistan province.

A woman was rushed to hospital. Her father and three cousins were killed.

“It appears to have been a targeted attack,” provincial police official Moazzam Jah Ansari told Reuters. “It was an act of terrorism.”

The attack comes a day after Pakistan’s Christian community celebrated Easter on Sunday. Around 2 percent of Pakistan’s population are Christians.

Minority religious festivals are a security concern in the majority Sunni Muslim country where there have been a number of high casualty attacks on Christians and Shi’ite Muslims.

Baluchistan, a region bordering Iran as well as Afghanistan, is plagued by violence by Sunni Islamist sectarian groups linked to the Taliban, al Qaeda and Islamic State. It also has an indigenous ethnic Baloch insurgency fighting against central government.

In December, a week before Christmas, two suicide bombers stormed a packed Christian church in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 10 people and wounding up to 56, in an attack claimed by Islamic State.

The family killed on Monday had come to visit relatives in Quetta’s Shahzaman road area, where a large number of the city’s Christian community lives.

Rome’s ancient Colosseum was lit in red for an evening in February in solidarity with persecuted Christians, particularly Asia Bibi, a Catholic woman who has been living on death row in Pakistan since 2010, when she was condemned for allegedly making derogatory remarks about Islam.

(Writing by Saad Sayeed; Editing by Alison Williams)

Saudi-led air strike kills 12 civilians, including seven children: medics

Morgue workers sort plastic bags containing bodies of an airstrike victims in Hodeida, Yemen April 2, 2018. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

HODEIDAH, Yemen (Reuters) – An air strike by the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen killed 12 civilians including seven children in the coastal city of Hodeidah on Monday, medics and a witness said.

Medics and a civilian who saw the wreckage said the air strike had destroyed a house in the al-Hali district, where displaced civilians from other provinces were settled.

The 12 victims were all from the same family, they said.

A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition told Reuters: “We take this report very seriously and it will be fully investigated as all reports of this nature are – using an internationally approved, independent process. Whilst this is ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

Hodeidah is home to the impoverished country’s biggest port from where most of the humanitarian aid reaches millions of civilians on the brink of famine. The operation of port, controlled by the Iran-aligned Houthis, was not affected by the air strike.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates intervened in a civil war in Yemen in 2015 against the Houthis to restore the internationally recognised government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The alliance, which includes other Sunni Muslim states, has conducted thousands of air strikes targeting Houthi fighters and has often hit civilian areas, although it denies ever doing so intentionally.

The war has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than 2 million and driven the country – already the poorest on the Arabian Peninsula – to the verge of famine.

Last week the Houthis launched a flurry of missiles which Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted over Riyadh. Debris from the missiles fell on a home, killing one person.

Rights watchdog Human Rights Watch on Monday said the Houthi attack had violated the laws of war by indiscriminately targeting populated areas.

“The Houthis should immediately stop their indiscriminate missile attacks on populated areas of Saudi Arabia,” said Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson.

“But just as unlawful coalition airstrikes don’t justify the Houthis’ indiscriminate attacks, the Saudis can’t use Houthi rockets to justify impeding life-saving goods for Yemen’s civilian population.”

When the Houthis fired missiles at Riyadh last November, the coalition responded by shutting Yemen’s airports and ports. The United Nations said that blockade raised the danger of mass starvation, and it was partially lifted.

(Reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Alison Williams and Hugh Lawson)

Israeli forces kill 15 Palestinians in Gaza border protests: Gaza medics

A Palestinian demonstrator holds an axe during clashes with Israeli troops, during a tent city protest along the Israel border with Gaza, demanding the right to return to their homeland, the southern Gaza Strip March 30, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA-ISRAEL BORDER (Reuters) – At least 15 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured by Israeli security forces confronting one of the largest Palestinian demonstrations along the Israel-Gaza border in recent years, Gaza medical officials said.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians, pressing for a right of return for refugees to what is now Israel, gathered at five locations along the fenced 65-km (40-mile) frontier where tents were erected for a planned six-week protest, local officials said. The Israeli military estimate was 30,000.

Families brought their children to the encampments just a few hundred meters (yards) from the Israeli security barrier with the Hamas Islamist-run enclave, and football fields were marked in the sand and scout bands played.

But as the day wore on, hundreds of Palestinian youths ignored calls from the organizers and the Israeli military to stay away from the frontier, where Israeli soldiers across the border kept watch from dirt mound embankments.

The military said its troops had used “riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators.” Some of the demonstrators were “rolling burning tires and hurling stones” at the border fence and at soldiers.

Two Palestinians were killed by tank fire, the Gaza Health Ministry said. The Israeli military said the two were militants who had opened fire at troops across the border.

Palestinian health officials said Israeli forces used mostly gunfire against the protesters, in addition to tear gas and rubber bullets. Witnesses said the military had deployed a drone over at least one location to drop tear gas.

Live fire was used only against people trying to sabotage the border security fence and at least two of the dead were Hamas operatives, an Israeli military official said.

Gaza health officials said one of the dead was aged 16 and at least 400 people were wounded by live gunfire, while others were struck by rubber bullets or treated for tear gas inhalation.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement that Israel was responsible for the violence and declared Saturday a national day of mourning.

The United Nations Security Council was due to meet later on Friday to discuss the situation in Gaza, diplomats said.

Israeli military vehicles are seen next to the border on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, as Palestinians demonstrate on the Gaza side of the border, March 30, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Israeli military vehicles are seen next to the border on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, as Palestinians demonstrate on the Gaza side of the border, March 30, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

RIGHT OF RETURN

The protest presented a rare show of unity among rival Palestinian factions in the impoverished Gaza Strip, where pressure has been building on Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah movement to end a decade-old rift. Reconciliation efforts to end the feud have been faltering for months.

The demonstration was launched on “Land Day,” an annual commemoration of the deaths of six Arab citizens of Israel killed by Israeli security forces during demonstrations over government land confiscations in northern Israel in 1976.

But its main focus was a demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed the right of return to towns and villages which their families fled from, or were driven out of, when the state of Israel was created in 1948.

In a statement, the Israeli military accused Hamas of “cynically exploiting women and children, sending them to the security fence and endangering their lives”.

The military said that more than 100 army sharpshooters had been deployed in the area.

Hamas, which seeks Israel’s destruction, had earlier urged protesters to adhere to the “peaceful nature” of the protest.

Israel has long ruled out any right of return, fearing an influx of Arabs that would wipe out its Jewish majority. It argues that refugees should resettle in a future state the Palestinians seek in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Peace talks to that end collapsed in 2014.

There were also small protests in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and about 65 Palestinians were injured.

In Gaza, the protest was dubbed “The March of Return” and some of the tents bore names of the refugees’ original villages in what is now Israel, written in Arabic and Hebrew alike.

Citing security concerns, Israel, which withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, blockades the coastal territory, maintaining tight restrictions on the movement of Palestinians and goods across the frontier. Egypt, battling an Islamist insurgency in neighboring Sinai, keeps its border with Gaza largely closed.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by Ori Lewis and Stephen Farrell; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Gareth Jones)

Executive at fire-ravaged Russian shopping mall arrested

FILE PHOTO: A view shows the burnt facade of a shopping mall in Kemerovo, Russia March 27, 2018. REUTERS/Maksim Lisov

KEMEROVO, Russia (Reuters) – Russian police on Friday arrested an executive with the firm that owns a shopping mall where a fire last weekend killed 64 people, most of them children.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, the state body that investigates major crimes, said in a statement the executive, Yulia Bogdanova, had failed to address shortcomings in fire safety at the shopping mall.

Bogdanova is the general director of a firm called ОАО Kemerovo Confectionary Combine, the owner of the “Winter Cherry” mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo where the fire broke out on Sunday.

At the time, the top floor of the complex, where the fire started, was packed with families visiting a cinema and a children’s play area. Investigators said fire exits were blocked and the fire alarm system failed to function.

“The investigation established that Bogdanova, as the person responsible for fire safety, was repeatedly informed by subordinates about shortcomings in the building’s fire safety system.” It said Bogdanova did not deal with the shortcomings.

A lawyer who has acted for Bogdanova’s employer agreed to pass on to her Reuters questions about her management of the mall, but there was no reply. A woman who answered a phone number listed for Bogdanova said it was a wrong number.

(Reporting by Polina Ivanova; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)

U.N. calls on Venezuela to investigate deadly prison fire

Relatives of inmates held at the General Command of the Carabobo Police react as they wait outside the prison, where a fire occurred in the cells area, according to local media, in Valencia, Venezuela March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations human rights office called on authorities in Venezuela on Thursday to carry out a speedy investigation into a prison fire and to provide reparations to victims’ families.

Rioting and a fire in the cells of a Venezuelan police station in the central city of Valencia killed 68 people on Wednesday, according to the government and witnesses. Venezuelan prisons are notoriously overcrowded and filled with weapons and drugs.

“We urge the Venezuelan authorities to carry out a prompt, thorough and effective investigation to establish the cause of these deaths, provide reparations to the victims’ families, and, where applicable, identify and bring those responsible to justice,” the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement voicing concern at prison conditions.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Gareth Jones)

In face of Ghouta defeat, Syrian rebels blame each other

FILE PHOTO: Rebel fighters gather and pray before they leave, at the city limits of Harasta, in the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta, Syria March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian rebel factions are blaming each other for opening the way to their defeat near Damascus, underlining splits that plagued the armed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad since its earliest days.

The rivalry between the factions of eastern Ghouta – Failaq al-Rahman and Jaish al-Islam – had led to the effective partition of the enclave since 2016 and fueled bouts of deadly violence that played to the government’s advantage.

Their rivalry has at some points mirrored tensions between their regional sponsors: Saudi Arabia, which has backed Jaish al-Islam, and Qatar, which supported Failaq al-Rahman.

With the help of Russian air strikes, the army has waged one of the most ferocious offensives of the war to recapture eastern Ghouta, killing more than 1,600 people since Feb. 18 according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Still, in media comments late on Sunday, the groups laid blame on each other for speeding up the government’s advances.

The Jaish al-Islam military spokesman, in an interview with al-Hadath TV, said Failaq al-Rahman had rejected a proposal to mount a shared defense of Ghouta and accused it of cutting water supplies needed to fill defensive trenches.

“These trenches dried up which sped up the regime’s advances,” said Hamza Birqdar, the spokesman.

The Failaq al-Rahman spokesman told the same TV station that Jaish al-Islam had staged a weak defense of the enclave, which advancing government forces split into three separate pockets.

“Failaq al-Rahman was stabbed in the back … via the frontlines that Jaish al-Islam was supposed to be at,” said Wael Olwan, Failaq al-Rahman’s Istanbul-based spokesman.

A Syrian official said the “conflict between the terrorist groups” in eastern Ghouta was one of the factors that had helped the military “achieve what it has achieved in a short space of time”.

It echoes a pattern at other key moments in the seven-year-long war: rebels blamed each other as government forces and Iran-backed Shi’ite militias thrust into opposition parts of eastern Aleppo, won back by Assad in 2016.

Thousands of Failaq al-Rahman fighters, accompanied by their families, are leaving their zone of eastern Ghouta in a negotiated withdrawal to insurgent territory in northern Syria.

Jaish al-Islam says it is holding out in its part of the enclave in the eastern Ghouta town of Douma. Assad’s Russian allies said on Monday that Jaish al-Islam fighters were also ready to lay down their arms and leave, which the group denied.

Rebels who have left eastern Ghouta so far have gone to Idlib, an insurgent-held region at the Turkish border. Idlib has also been blighted by fighting between the dominant faction – fighters formerly affiliated to al Qaeda – and other rebels.

The fragmented state of the anti-Assad armed opposition has been seen as one of its critical weaknesses since the start of the conflict, which the UK-based Observatory says has killed half a million people since 2011.

Russian and Iranian military backing for Assad has also far outstripped support that had been offered to rebel groups from foreign states including Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

In addition to their foothold in the northwest, anti-Assad rebels still hold a chunk of territory at the frontier with Jordan and Israel, and small enclaves near Damascus, Homs and Hama.

(Reporting by Tom Perry and Ellen Francis; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Peter Graff)

At least 64 people, some children, killed in Russian mall fire

Still photo taken from video provided by Russian Emergencies Ministry shows a site of a fire at a shopping mall in Kemerovo, Russia March 25, 2018. Russian Emergencies Ministry/Handout via REUTERS

By Maria Kiselyova and Christian Lowe

MOSCOW (Reuters) – At least 64 people were killed by a fire which engulfed a busy shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, Russian investigators said on Monday, and some of the dead were children.

The fire, one of the deadliest in Russia since the break-up of the Soviet Union, swept through the upper floors of the “Winter Cherry” shopping center on Sunday afternoon where a cinema complex and children’s play area were located.

Emergency services said they had extinguished the blaze, but later said it had reignited, and that rescuers were struggling to reach the building’s upper floors because the roof had collapsed. TV footage on Monday showed thick black smoke rising from the yellow building.

A man reacts at the scene of a fire in a shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, Russia March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Marina Lisova

A man reacts at the scene of a fire in a shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, Russia March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Marina Lisova

It was unclear if any people were still unaccounted for, but 11 people were being treated in hospital, including an 11-year-old boy who was in a serious condition.

Earlier on Monday, people had posted appeals on social media seeking news of their relatives or friends, and authorities set up a center in a school near the mall to deal with inquiries.

Anna Kuznetsova, Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, said the fire had been caused by incompetence and warned there were many similar shopping centers.

“Other regions, the bosses of other malls must right now, without waiting for (routine) checks, ask themselves: Have we done everything we can to ensure something like this doesn’t happen here,” Kuznetsova said in a statement.

The shopping mall, a former cake factory, had few windows or doors.

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION

Witnesses were quoted by Russian media as saying that the fire alarm had failed to go off, and that many people had found themselves trapped because exit doors were locked.

Video footage from inside the mall after the fire broke out showed a group of people in a smoke-filled staircase trying to smash a fire exit door, which was jammed.

Russia’s Channel One TV station reported that some people had jumped from upper windows to escape the flames.

State investigators, who have opened a criminal investigation into the blaze, said four people had been detained over the fire, including the owners and lessees of outlets inside the mall. Russia’s Investigative Committee, which handles major crimes, said it was trying to bring in the mall’s owner for questioning.

The Interfax news agency cited an unnamed local official source as saying the main theory being looked at was that the fire had been caused by an electrical short circuit.

However, it quoted Vladimir Chernov, the region’s deputy governor, as saying on Sunday that the blaze had started when a child had set fire to the foam on a trampoline in a play area using a lighter.

State TV said the mall had opened in 2013.

President Vladimir Putin, elected to a new term last weekend, spoke by telephone with the governor of the Kemerovo region and with the head of the Emergency Situations Ministry whom he dispatched to the scene.

Russia’s health minister, Veronika Skvortsova, flew to Kemerovo, a coal-producing region about 3,600 km (2,200 miles) east of Moscow, and visited the injured in hospital.

Putin “expressed his deep condolences to the relatives and loved ones of those who died,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

Mourners left flowers near the scene of the blaze.

Other big fires in Russia have often turned out to be the result of serious violations of fire safety regulations.

In 2009, 156 people were killed in the city of Perm when an indoor pyrotechnics display at a nightclub went wrong. The owner of that nightclub was convicted of negligence and sentenced to almost a decade in prison.

(Writing by Christian Lowe and Andrew Osborn; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Girl wounded in Maryland high school shooting dies

16 year old School shooting victim in Maryland Jaelynn Wiley

By Ian Simpson

(Reuters) – A 16-year-old girl critically wounded this week by a fellow student at a Maryland high school has died, raising the number killed in the latest deadly U.S. school shooting to two, authorities said on Friday.

Jaelynn Willey died at 11:34 p.m. EDT on Thursday, surrounded by her family, the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Friday.

The death came hours after her mother said at a hospital that her daughter had been declared brain dead and would be taken off life support.

“It is with heavy hearts and great sadness we provide this update,” the sheriff’s statement said.

Willey, a student at Great Mills High School in southern Maryland, was shot by student Austin Rollins, 17, in a hallway on Tuesday. Willey had been in a relationship with Rollins that had recently ended, the sheriff’s office has said.

A school resource officer confronted Rollins and they simultaneously fired shots at each other, according to police. Rollins was wounded and died at a hospital. The officer was unharmed.

Investigators have been uncertain over who fired a shot that hit a 14-year-old student in the leg.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Hunger brings death to Congolese Kasai after guns fall silent

An internally displaced woman sits with her severely acute malnourished children as they wait to receive medical attention at the Tshiamala general referral hospital of Mwene Ditu in Kasai Oriental Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

By media coulibaly

MWENE DITU, Democratic Republic of Congo, March 21 (Reuters) – The guns have fallen silent in the Congolese town of Mwene Ditu, but each day starving children arrive at the small hospital there battling for their lives.

Justine Musau, pregnant with her second child, fled into the forest in the central Kasai region last year after militiamen arrived in her nearby village and started decapitating residents they accused of collaborating with government forces.

“We didn’t know who had gone where,” she said, holding her four-year-old daughter close to her chest. Nourished only by the occasional serving of cassava, her two children had fallen ill from the lack of nutrients, she said.

“We went to sleep famished for three or four days at a time. We didn’t have pots or pans to prepare (food) so we had practically nothing to eat.”

Fighting between the army and the Kamuina Nsapu militia went on for about a year in the generally peaceful region’s worst outbreak of violence in decades. As many as 5,000 people were killed and an estimated 1.5 million forced from their homes.

Hostilities broke out in August 2016 when Congolese forces killed local chief Jean-Pierre Mpandi, who had demanded their withdrawal from Kasai.

Both sides committed atrocities, according to witness testimonies gathered by Reuters and the United Nations.

Security forces gunned down women and children in door-to-door raids and militiamen burned down houses and cut off alleged government sympathizers’ heads, feeding the blood to their young fighters as part of gruesome initiation rituals.

The deployment of more government troops into Kasai has largely put a stop to the violence, and hundreds of thousands of civilians are now returning home.

But as they do, hunger and disease are eclipsing guns and machetes as the region’s most prolific killers.

About 400,000 children in Kasai suffer from severe acute malnutrition, roughly the same number as in civil war-ravaged Yemen, according to the United Nations children’s agency (UNICEF).

Only 13 percent receive medical attention “because there is not enough financing or attention,” said Christophe Boulierac, a UNICEF spokesman.

While a cholera epidemic that has already killed more than 100 people also rages, the fields that grow the cassava and maize the population depends on to survive lie barren from months of neglect.

COMBUSTIBLE MIX

The crisis in Kasai is one of several gripping Congo, where President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to step down when his mandate expired in December 2016 inflamed a combustible mix of ethnic grievances and competition over land and mineral resources that has fuelled years of conflict.

In all, over 13 million Congolese need humanitarian aid, twice as many as last year, and 7.7 million face severe food insecurity, up 30 percent from a year ago, the U.N. said in a report this month.

Aid groups say they have only a fraction of the $1.7 billion they need this year, so many of those returning home hungry and destitute find they are left to fend for themselves.

“After a month in the forest, we heard people cry out, ‘Leave the bush, the Kamuina Nsapu have left,'” recalled Justine Mulanaga, who had come to the hospital with her two young grandchildren.

“We left the forest to return to the village but everything was destroyed,” she said. “We didn’t even find a glass or a plate.”

(Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by John Stonestreet)

Fifth device explodes in Texas, seen linked to others

A FedEx truck is seen outside FedEx facility following the blast, in Schertz, Texas, U.S., March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Sergio Flores

By Jon Herskovitz and Jim Forsyth

AUSTIN/SCHERTZ, Texas (Reuters) – A package bomb blew up at a FedEx distribution center near San Antonio on Tuesday, the fifth in a series of attacks that have rocked Texas this month and sent investigators on a frantic search for what they suspect is a serial bomber.

The package filled with nails and metal shrapnel was mailed from Austin to another address in Austin and passed through a sorting center in Schertz, about 65 miles (105 km) away, when it exploded on a conveyer belt, knocking a female employee off her feet, officials said.

It was the fifth explosion in Texas in the past 18 days and the first involving a commercial parcel service.

“We do believe that these incidents are all related. That is because of the specific contents of these devices,” interim Austin Police Chief Brian Manley told members of the Austin City Council, the Austin American-Statesman reported.

A second package sent by the same person was discovered and turned over to law enforcement, FedEx Corp said in a statement. Meanwhile police had surrounded yet another FedEx location in the Austin area after discovering a suspicious package there.

The series of bombings have unsettled Austin, the state capital of some 1 million people, and drawn hundreds of federal law enforcement investigators to join local police. Schertz lies on the highway between Austin and San Antonio.

Speaking through the media, officials have appealed to the bomber to reveal the motives for the attacks. They have also asked the public for any tips, offering a $115,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the culprit.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a tweet: “We are committed to bringing perpetrators of these heinous acts to justice. There is no apparent nexus to terrorism at this time.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether it was ruling out both international and domestic terrorism.

“This is obviously a very, very sick individual, or maybe individuals,” President Donald Trump told reporters. “Theseare sick people, and we will get to the bottom of it.”

Investigators were trying to come up with a theory or intelligence regarding the motive for the bombings or identity of the bomber or bombers, a U.S. security official and a law enforcement official told Reuters.

Members of the media move cameras around before the start of a news conference outside the scene of a blast at a FedEx facility in Schertz, Texas, U.S., March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Sergio Flore

Members of the media move cameras around before the start of a news conference outside the scene of a blast at a FedEx facility in Schertz, Texas, U.S., March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Sergio Flores

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating the FedEx package explosion as if there were a connection to the Austin bombings, the law enforcement official said. Both sources declined to be identified.

The individual or people behind the bombings are likely to be highly skilled and methodical, said Fred Burton, chief security officer for Stratfor, a private intelligence and security consulting firm based in Austin.

“This is a race against time to find him before he bombs again,” Burton said.

The four previous explosions killed two people and injured four others.

The first three devices were parcel bombs dropped off in front of homes on in three eastern Austin neighborhoods. The fourth went off on Sunday night on the west side of the city and was described by police as a more sophisticated device detonated through a trip wire.

The four devices were similar in construction, suggesting they were the work of the same bomb maker, officials said.

Federal authorities at the scene of Tuesday’s blast offered few details, telling reporters their probe was in the early stages and that the building would be secured before investigators could gather evidence.

The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were among those working with local officials in Austin, Schertz and San Antonio.

“We have agents from across the country. We have our national response team here. We have explosive detection canines here. We have intel research specialists,” Frank Ortega, acting assistant special agent in charge of the San Antonio ATF office, told reporters. “We’ve been working around the clock.”

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Mark Hosenball and Lisa Lambert in Washington; Writing Daniel Trotta; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Tom Brown)