Tag Archives: Injured

Investigators search for clues in South Carolina school shooting

Police officers investigate the scene of the shooting in the South Carolina Elementary school

By Harriet McLeod

CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) – Investigators were searching on Thursday for the motive behind a shooting spree by a South Carolina teenager who killed his father and wounded two school students and a teacher before being pinned down by a volunteer fireman.

The incident was the latest in a series of shootings at U.S. schools that has fueled debate about access to guns in America.

The 14-year-old boy, whose name has not been released, shot and killed his father, Jeffrey DeWitt Osborne, 47, on Wednesday afternoon.

Then he drove to Townville Elementary School, where he shot two boys and a woman teacher with a handgun, before being subdued by the volunteer firefighter, police said.

Authorities said they were checking if there was a connection between the gunman and the school victims, but had ruled out terrorism and ethnicity as motivating factors.

The suspect was in custody and interviewed by investigators on Wednesday night, Anderson County Sheriff John Skipper told a news conference.

“We are in the process of taking him through the legal process,” he added.

Authorities said the suspect was home-schooled and called his grandmother, who went to his home and found his father.

“She could not make out what he was saying because he was crying and upset, and so they went to the house, and that’s when she discovered her son and called 911,” coroner Greg Shore told the news conference.

Next, the boy drove a pickup truck about 2 miles (3.2 km) to the school, and crashed into a fence around the playground before shooting the other three victims, police said.

One boy, Jacob Hall, 6, was shot in the leg, police said. He is in critical condition, Greenville Health System spokeswoman Sandy Dees said.

The other boy, also 6, according to media reports, was shot in the foot and the teacher was shot in the shoulder, authorities said.

Both were treated and released from hospital, said Ross Norton, a spokesman for AnMed Health Medical Center.

Volunteer firefighter Jamie Brock pinned down the teenager after he began shooting, as staff led children to safety, Taylor Jones, the emergency services director for Anderson County, told a news conference.

Brock, a 30-year veteran of the Townville Volunteer Fire Department, was hailed on social media as a hero and credited with preventing another school massacre.

Police arrived within minutes of a 911 call to take the suspect into custody. He never entered the school building, said Chief Deputy Keith Smith.

About 280 students attend the school in Anderson County, near the Georgia state line about 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Atlanta. It will stay shut on Thursday and Friday as authorities investigate.

U.S. schools have beefed up security precautions since 2012, when a gunman shot and killed 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Immediately after the shooting, armed officers guarded the students as they traveled by bus from the school to a nearby church, media said. Television images showed police swarming the school, with some officers on the roof.

Wednesday’s events follow a Texas incident this month in which a 14-year-old girl shot and wounded a fellow student before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

(Additional reporting Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Bomb attacks kill seven, wound 224 in southeast Turkey

Turkey blast

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Two bomb attacks blamed on Kurdish militants killed seven members of the security forces and wounded 224 people in southeast Turkey on Thursday, officials and security sources said, in a renewed escalation of violence across the region.

A car bomb ripped through a police station in the city of Elazig at 9:20 a.m. (0620 GMT) as officers arrived for work. Three police officers were killed and 217 people were wounded, 85 of them police officers, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said.

Offices in the police station were left in ruins and filled with smoke after the bomb exploded in front of the complex, destroying part of the facade, CNN Turk footage showed.

Less than four hours later, a roadside bomb believed to have been planted by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants tore through a military vehicle in the Hizan district of Bitlis province, security sources said.

They said the blast killed three soldiers and a member of the state-sponsored village guard militia and wounded another seven soldiers.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombings, but Yildirim said there was no doubt they were carried out by the PKK, deemed a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

“The (PKK) terror group has lost its chain of command. Its elements inside (Turkey) are carrying out suicide attacks randomly wherever they get the opportunity,” Yildirim told reporters in Elazig.

“We have raised the state of alarm to a higher level,” he said at the scene of the attack, where a crowd chanted “Damn the PKK!”

The PKK has carried out dozens of attacks on police and military posts since 2015 in the largely Kurdish southeast in its fight for greater autonomy for Turkey’s 15 million Kurds.

Elazig, a conservative province that votes in large numbers for the ruling AK Party, had been spared violence until now.

Video footage showed a plume of black smoke rising above the city after the blast, which uprooted trees and gouged a large crater outside the police complex, which is situated on a busy thoroughfare in the city of 420,000 people.

In Van province, further east, two police officers and one civilian were killed and 73 people were wounded late on Wednesday when a car bomb exploded near a police station, the local governor’s office said in a statement.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack in Van, a largely Kurdish province on the Iranian border. The Van governor’s office said the PKK was responsible.

The southeast has been scorched by violence since a 2 1/2-year ceasefire with the PKK collapsed in July last year. Thousands of militants and hundreds of soldiers and police officers have been killed, according to official figures. Rights groups say about 400 civilians have also been killed.

On Thursday, PKK militants also attacked a police checkpoint in the southeastern town of Semdinli, near the Iraqi and Iranian borders, wounding two police officers, Dogan news agency said.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in violence since the PKK first took up arms in 1984.

(Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley, Akin Aytekin and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by Daren Butler and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Larry King)

San Diego police say officer fatally shot, another wounded

police sirens

(Reuters) – A San Diego police officer was fatally shot and another was wounded late on Thursday, the police department said on Friday, adding one suspect was taken into custody.

The officers, members of the department’s gang suppression unit, were shot during a traffic stop at about 11 p.m. PDT (0600 GMT) in Southcrest, a neighborhood in southeast San Diego, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The officers were taken to hospitals.

“It is with a very sad heart that we announce the death of one of our officers tonight,” the department said on Friday on its Twitter feed.

The second officer underwent surgery and is expected to survive, it said.

The police department added it was searching for other suspects.

The incident comes after eight officers were shot dead in ambushes in Dallas and Baton Rouge in July, putting police departments across the United States on high alert.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee, Editing by Tom Heneghan and W Simon)

Car bomb kills nine north of Baghdad, say sources

residents at car bombing site in Baghdad

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – At least nine people were killed and 32 wounded on Tuesday when a car packed with explosives was detonated in a district just north of Baghdad, security and medical sources said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast in Rashidiya, but Islamic State regularly carries out such bombings in the capital and other parts of Iraq, where it seized large swathes of territory in 2014.

Baghdad is on high alert for attacks after a blast in the central Karrada district on July 3 killed at least 292 people, making it one of the deadliest bombings in Iraq since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein 13 years ago.

Islamic State has turned increasingly to ad hoc attacks, which U.S. and Iraqi officials have touted as proof that battlefield setbacks are weakening the jihadists. But critics say a global uptick in suicide attacks attributed to the group suggests it may adapt and survive.

(Reporting by Kareem Raheem; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Aftershocks rattle Japan from strong quake ~ 7.4 Hits Friday

Local residents wrap themselves in blankets as they sit on the road in front of the town office building after an earthquake in Mashiki town, Kumamoto in april 2016

By Elaine Lies

TOKYO (Reuters) – Aftershocks rattled southwestern Japan on Friday after a strong quake the night before killed nine people, injured at least 1,000 and cut power and water across the region, forcing the temporary shutdown of several auto and electronics factories.

By afternoon, more than 130 aftershocks had hit the area around the city of Kumamoto in the wake of the initial 6.4 magnitude quake the night before. Officials said the frequency was tapering off but the risk of further strong aftershocks will remain for about a week.

While the magnitude of Thursday’s quake was much lower than that of the 9.0 March 11, 2011 quake that touched off a massive tsunami and nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima, the intensity was similar because it struck on land and at a much shallower depth.

“We managed to huddle into a space, that’s why we were saved,” one man told NHK national television after he and his family were rescued from their collapsed house two hours after the quake hit. “We’re all safe, that’s what counts.”

More than 44,000 people initially fled to schools and community centers, some spending the night outside after the first quake hit around 9:30 p.m.

Roads cracked, houses crumbled, and tiles cascaded from the roof of the 400-year-old Kumamoto Castle in the center of the city.

Among those pulled from the wreckage was an eight-month-old baby girl, wrapped in a blanket and passed hand to hand by firefighters. Several hospitals had to evacuate patients.

Japanese stocks ended down 0.4 percent, with the impact of the quake limited primarily to regional shares that could experience some direct impact. Regional utility Saibu Gas Co Ltd finished 2.7 percent lower.

Several companies, including Honda Motor Corp, suspended operations at plants in the area.

More than 3,000 troops, police and firemen were dispatched to the area from around Japan, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said more would be sent if needed.

“We will do everything in our power to ensure the safety of local residents,” Abe told a parliamentary committee.

Most of the dead came from Mashiki, a town of around 34,000 people near the epicenter of the quake, where firefighters battled a blaze late on Thursday. Daylight showed splintered houses under tiled roofs and an apartment building whose ground floor was pulverized, where two people died.

“I want to go home, but we couldn’t do anything there,” one boy at an evacuation center told TBS television as he bounced a baby in his arms.

Though the intensity of Thursday’s quake on the Japanese scale matched that of the March 2011 quake that left nearly 20,000 dead, the absence of a tsunami helped keep the death toll down.

Service on the Shinkansen superfast train in Kyushu was halted after one train derailed, and highways were closed after some sections collapsed. About 12,200 households were without electricity as of 12 p.m. (0500 GMT), according to Kyushu Electric Power Co Inc;, while some 58,000 lacked water.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority said there were no irregularities at three nuclear plants on the southern major island of Kyushu and nearby Shikoku.

Sony Corp., Mitsubishi Electric Corp and tire maker Bridgestone Corp. also suspended operations at factories in the area.

The 2011 quake temporarily crippled part of Japan’s auto supply chain, but some companies have since adjusted the industry’s “Just in Time” production philosophy in a bid to limit any repeat of the costly disruption.

(Additional reporting by Joshua Hunt, Naomi Tajitsu and Tokyo newsroom; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

Brazilian Dam Breaks, Flooding Village with Mud; 2 Dead, Dozens Missing

Two dams at a Brazilian iron ore mine collapsed on Friday, resulting in a devastating mudslide that has killed at least 2 people, injured 30, and left dozens missing.

A spokesman representing the firefighters said that the numbers of deaths, injured, and missing will likely rise due to the mudslide knocking over cell towers and blocking roads. Time Magazine reports that union officials believe the casualties could be as high as 15.

“In reality there are a lot more, but we can’t confirm any more than that. We don’t even know that we’ll find everybody,” firefighter Adão Severino Junior in the nearby city of Mariana told Reuters.

Hundreds of families were evacuated from the area after the initial escape to higher ground. Television footage of the incident showed a car perched on top of a wall, trees being leveled, and roofs being ripped off of houses due to the waste waters that were unleashed from the dams, according to Reuters.

Rescue teams are still looking for trapped survivors.

Guatemalan Mudslide Kills 237; Death Toll Expected to Rise

Recovery after the Guatemalan Mudslide that erased part of  the town of Santa Catarina Pinula last week has uncovered 237 bodies so far from the mountains of mud and debris in the mudslide created from heavy rainfall.

Backhoes continued to remove thousands of tons of dirt from the acres-wide mudflow in the neighborhood of Cambray, on the outskirts of Guatemala City, with very little hope of finding anyone alive.

Officials have reported that many other people are still missing.  

Several hundred people were being housed in shelters run by the local government National Disaster Reduction Commission known as Conred.

The agency has said it issued a number of warnings about the dangers of living on the base of this mountain area. Officials this week declared the area uninhabitable.

Manuel Pocasangre, the communications director for the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula said state employees in recent years had gone door-to-door to talk to people about the risks of where they lived even in the last year.  

Stating that he had warned Mayor Tono Coro of the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula that the river was eating away at the base of the steep hill. “What we know is that people were conscious about the risk they were taking,” Pocasangre said Wednesday.  

Maldonado acknowledged there are many neighborhoods like Cambray in and around Guatemala City that are at risk of flooding or mudslides

The country’s prosecutor’s office has announced an investigation of the matter.

Massive Sandstorm Strikes Middle East

An out-of-season sandstorm has struck the Middle East causing thousands to have medical issues and reducing visibility in region.

The Times of Israel called the storm “a brownish-yellow fog throughout the country.”  The storm has been working across Israel and into Lebanon, Iraq and Syria.  Meteorologists say the storm will be followed by an intense heat wave that will last through the weekend.

Health officials through the region are telling residents to stay inside to avoid breathing problems.  Schools were either closed to keep children inside to avoid the fine particulates in the air.

The head of a major hospital in Damascus told reporters that over 1,200 people had been treated for breathing problems.  At least 100 of the victims were children.

“It is unbelievable. This must be some test,” said Mansour, a Damascus resident, who gave only his first name told the Associated Press. “It’s hot. Temperatures are high and above that we have this dusty weather! It is something beyond reasonable. Enough please!”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that some villages such as al-Mayadeen were so short of medical supplies that they ran out of oxygen canisters and had to turn away victims of the storm.

Japan Told To Prepare For “Big One”

Japanese seismologists are warning citizens to prepare for “Big One” after a 7.8 magnitude quake struck off the country’s coast Saturday night.

The quake, more than 540 miles from the nation’s capital, was strong enough to make buildings in the capital shake for more than a minute.  No serious damage was reported and no tsunami was issued for the country.

However, a dozen people were injured, mostly from falls.

“This was a very big quake… the shaking was felt over a broad area… fortunately, because it was deep, there is little danger of a tsunami,” Naoki Hirata, of the University of Tokyo’s earthquake research center, told the BBC.

The Saturday quake was followed Sunday morning by a 6.2 magnitude quake.

Experts are saying that the recent seismic activity around the country, which includes the eruption of Mt. Shindake, could mean that active crustal changes are taking place.

“I can say Japan is in an active stage now,” said Toshiyasu Nagao, head of Earthquake Prediction Research Centre at Tokai University.

“Considering the geographic location of Japan, we can say the current activities are rather normal and it was too quiet [before the 2011 earthquake],” Nagao told AFP. “We should be vigilant by knowing that an earthquake sizeable enough to affect our society can occur any time in the future.”

Terrorists Bomb Afghani Play Condemning Terrorism

A homicide bomber walked into an auditorium in Kabul, Afghanistan and set off his device killing a German man and wounding 16 people.

The crowd was watching a play that condemned terrorist homicide bombing attacks called “Heartbeat: Silence After the Explosion.”  The head of the Interior Ministry said a 17-year-old boy walked into the play during an early evening performance to commit the attack.

“I heard a deafening explosion … There were Afghans, foreigners, young girls and young boys watching the show,” Sher Ahmad, an Afghan rights activist who was at the performance, told Reuters.

The Taliban said that they attacked the play because it was aimed “to insult Islamic values and spread propaganda about our jihad operations, especially on suicide attacks”.

The attack is the second homicide bombing terrorist attack in Kabul within a week.  Six Afghani soldiers were killed when a terrorist hit their bus as they were heading to work.

The attacks are part of a nationwide campaign by the Taliban to strike at military and civilians, as most of the foreign military units would be leaving the country by the end of the month.