Tag Archives: truck attack

Argentine survivor of New York attack pleads for justice, love

The flag hangs at half mast at the Argentine Consulate, in honour of the five Argentine citizens who were killed in the truck attack in New York on October 31, in New York City, U.S., November 2, 2017.

(Reuters) – “What has the world turned in to?” a friend of the five Argentines killed in the New York attack this week asked at a news conference on Friday, alongside three other surviving members of a group of former classmates.

Guillermo Banchini, an architect, and friends were cycling in New York during a 30-year high school reunion trip on Tuesday when a driver of a pickup truck plowed down a bike path.

“How could someone think of, plan and do something like this? We cannot get our heads around it,” Banchini said at the Argentine consulate in New York.

“Let there be justice. Let this not be repeated, not here nor anywhere in the world.”

Eight people, including a Belgian woman, a New Yorker and a New Jersey man, were killed and 11 injured in lower Manhattan in the attack along the Hudson River.

The suspect, 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant Sayfullo Saipov, was charged with acting on behalf of Islamic State, whose followers have carried out vehicle attacks in several cities, mostly in Europe.

The five deceased Argentines, businessmen and architects aged 48 to 49, were all alums of a polytechnic high school in Rosario, Argentina’s third-largest city.

Another member of the group, Martin Ludovico Marro, was injured and hospitalized in Manhattan and did not attend the televised news conference.

Banchini, speaking on behalf of the other Argentine survivors, said the pain they were feeling would always endure, but they would move forward the way they had learned as close knit childhood friends.

“In the name of those values, and a way of life, we want to make a bet – love conquers hate,” he said.

 

(Reporting by Maximilian Heath and Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Andrew Hay)

 

Berlin Christmas market attacker got order directly from IS: report

FILE PHOTO: A general view shows the site where a truck ploughed through a crowd at a Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz square near the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm avenue in the west of Berlin, Germany, December 19, 2016 REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski

BERLIN (Reuters) – The Tunisian who killed 12 people by driving a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin received his orders directly from Islamic State, a German magazine reported on Saturday.

The militant group claimed responsibility for the attack on Dec. 19, but it was unclear whether it had planned and executed it, or just inspired the attacker with its calls on supporters to hit targets in enemy countries.

Der Spiegel cited information provided to German security authorities from the United Arab Emirates on Jan. 8 that said Anis Amri, the failed asylum seeker who drove the truck into the crowd, had received an order from a squad within IS.

The squad is known to German authorities from other proceedings against suspected IS militants disguised as refugees, the magazine said.

Amri, who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was shot dead by Italian police in Milan four days after the Berlin attack. Islamic State said the attack had been perpetrated by an IS “soldier … in response to calls to target nationals of the coalition countries”.

The federal public prosecutor’s office and the BKA federal police are looking into the information provided by the UAE, the magazine said, adding that German authorities considered the source to be reliable.

When asked for comment, the BKA said the federal public prosecutor’s office was responsible for providing information on the Amri case. The prosecutor’s office declined to comment.

On Wednesday, the prosecutor’s office said it had no evidence that other people based in Germany were involved in preparing or carrying out the attack and an evaluation of Amri’s mobile phone showed he had communicated with an IS member abroad before and during the attack.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin; Additional reporting by Holger Hansen; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Uzbekistan says told West that Stockholm attack suspect was IS recruit

People lay flowers near the crime scene at Ahlens department store at the pedestrian street Drottninggatan in central Stockholm, Sweden, April 12, 2017. TT NEWS AGENCY/ Fredrik Sandberg via REUTERS

TASHKENT (Reuters) – Uzbekistan’s security services warned a western ally before last week’s deadly truck attack in Stockholm that the suspected perpetrator was an Islamic State recruit, Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov said on Friday.

Kamilov told reporters that Rakhmat Akilov had been recruited by the jihadist group after he left the Central Asian nation in 2014 and settled in Sweden.

“According to the information that we have, he actively urged his compatriots to travel to Syria in order to fight at Islamic State’s side,” Kamilov said, adding that Akilov had used online messaging services.

“Earlier (before the attack), information on Akilov’s criminal actions had been passed by security services to one of our Western partners so that the Swedish side could be informed.”

Kamilov did not identify the intermediary country or organization.

A spokesman for Sweden’s security police declined to comment on Kamilov’s statement. The police said last week they had intelligence on Akilov in 2016 that they could not verify.

An Uzbek security source said on Wednesday that Akilov had tried to travel to Syria in 2015 to join IS but was detained at the Turkish-Syrian border and deported back to Sweden.

The source added that Uzbekistan authorities had in February put him on a wanted list of people suspected of religious extremism.

(Reporting by Mukhammadsharif Mamatkulov; Additional reporting by Bjorn Rundstrom in Stockholm; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Katya Golubkova and John Stonestreet)

Four killed by truck driven into crowd in Swedish capital

A view of the site where a truck drove into a crowd and into a department store in central Stockholm, Sweden, April 7, 2017. REUTERS/Dominik Armada

By Johan Ahlander

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A truck plowed into a crowd on a shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm on Friday, killing four people and wounding 15 in what the prime minister said appeared to be a terrorist attack.

Swedish police said they had arrested one person after earlier circulating a picture of a man wearing a grey hoodie. They did not rule out the possibility other attackers were involved.

“We have a person who is arrested who may have connections to the event in Stockholm earlier today,” police spokesperson Towe Hagg said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

“I turned around and saw a big truck coming toward me. It swerved from side to side. It didn’t look out of control, it was trying to hit people,” Glen Foran, an Australian tourist in his 40s, told Reuters.

“It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it,” he said.

“It took a long time for police to get here. I suppose from their view it was quick, but it felt like forever.”

Part of central Stockholm was cordoned off and the area was evacuated, including the main train station. All subway traffic was halted on police orders. Government offices were closed. (Map of attack location – http://tmsnrt.rs/2oguW2M)

“Sweden has been attacked. Everything points to the fact that this is a terrorist attack,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told reporters during a visit to western Sweden. He was immediately returning to the capital.

Many police and emergency services personnel were at the scene, said a Reuters witness who saw policemen put what appeared to be two bodies into body bags. Bloody tyre tracks on Drottninggatan (Queen Street) showed where the truck had passed.

The truck had been stolen while making a beer delivery to a tapas bar further up Drottninggatan, Spendrups Brewery spokesman Marten Lyth said. A masked person jumped into the cab, started the truck and drove away.

“We were standing by the traffic lights at Drottninggatan and then we heard some screaming and saw a truck coming,” a witness who declined to be named told Reuters.

“Then it drove into a pillar at Ahlens City (department store) where the hood started burning. When it stopped we saw a man lying under the tyre. It was terrible to see,” said the man, who saw the incident from his car.

Police said four people had died and 15 were injured. National news agency TT said those hurt included the delivery driver, who had tried to stop the hijack.

Several attacks in which trucks or cars have driven into crowds have taken place in Europe in the past year. Al Qaeda in 2010 urged its followers to use trucks as a weapon.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack in Nice, France, last July, when a truck killed 86 people celebrating Bastille Day, and one in Berlin in December, when a truck smashed through a Christmas market, killing 12 people.

Magnus Ranstorp, head of terrorism research at the Swedish Defence University, told Reuters the attacker’s approach was similar to those in Berlin and Nice: “Hijacking a truck, that has happened before.”

“And this is a pretty cunning modus operandi,” he said. “To drive to Ahlens (department store) and stop … There is a way down to the subway just a few meters away from there, and then you … can jump on any train you want and quickly disappear.”

Sweden’s King Carl Gustaf said in a statement: “Our thoughts are going out to those that were affected, and to their families.”

“An attack on any of our member states is an attack on us all,” said European Union chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker.

Stockholmers opened up their homes and offered lifts to people who were unable to get home or needed a place to stay.

The attack was the latest to hit the Nordic region after shootings in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2015 that killed three people and the 2011 bombing and shooting by far right extremist Anders Behring Breivik that killed 77 people in Norway.

Sweden has not been hit by a large-scale attack, although in December 2010, a man blew himself up only a few hundred yards from the site of the latest incident in a failed suicide attack.

In February U.S. President Donald Trump falsely suggested there had been an immigration-related security incident in Sweden, to the bafflement of Swedes.

Swedish authorities raised the national security threat level to four on a scale of five in October 2010 but lowered the level to three, indicating a “raised threat”, in March 2016.

Police in Norway’s largest cities and at Oslo’s airport will carry weapons until further notice following the attack. Denmark has been on high alert since the February 2015 shootings.

Neutral Sweden has not fought a war in more than 200 years, but its military has taken part in U.N peacekeeping missions in a number of conflict zones in recent years, including Iraq, Mali and Afghanistan.

The Sapo security police said in its annual report it was impossible to say how big a risk there was that Sweden would be targeted like other European cities, but that, if so “it is most likely that it would be undertaken by a lone attacker”.

(Reporting by Stockholm newsroom; Writing by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Catherine Evans)

One dead after man drives into crowd in Germany, no sign of terrorism: authorities

By Andreas Burger

HEIDELBERG, Germany (Reuters) – A man died and two other people were injured after a 35-year-old German man drove into a crowd standing near a bakery in the southwestern town of Heidelberg on Saturday, but the authorities said there were no indications that it was a terrorist attack.

The 73-year-old man who died in hospital from his injuries was also German. The two other people injured, a 32-year-old Austrian man and a 29-year-old woman from Bosnia and Herzegovina, also received hospital treatment but were then discharged, police and prosecutors said in a statement.

“Based on investigations so far, there are no signs of a terrorist motive,” they said.

According to the statement, the suspect was seen getting out of the car with a knife and was later tracked down to an old swimming pool. He was taken to a hospital in Heidelberg having been shot by police while being arrested, leaving him seriously injured.

He has since been operated on but nothing further is known about the current state of his health, the police and prosecutors said.

Regional newspaper Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung said the suspect was not fit to be questioned.

Police spokesman Heiko Kranz said experts were gathering evidence such as DNA traces and fingerprints and examining the contents of the car, adding that the suspect would be interviewed if he was fit to be questioned.

Investigations by the public prosecutors’ office in Heidelberg and the town’s criminal police were continuing, police said.

The Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung newspaper said the suspect had stopped at a red traffic light and when it turned green put his foot down before hitting the group of people at high speed and smashing into a pillar.

The German authorities are on high alert after a failed Tunisian asylum-seeker drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin on Dec. 19, killing 12 people.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin, Andreas Kenner and Andreas Burger; Writing by Michelle Martin; Editing by Greg Mahlich)

Four dead, more than 20 hurt when driver ploughs into Australian pedestrians

Police block off street where truck attack took place

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – A man deliberately drove into pedestrians, killing four and injuring more than 20, in the center of Australia’s second largest city of Melbourne on Friday, but police said the incident was not terrorism-related.

Police eventually rammed the car and shot the 26-year-old driver in the arm, before dragging him from the vehicle and arresting him. Police said the man had a history of family violence and was wanted over a stabbing earlier in the day.

Pursued by police cars, the man had been seen driving erratically before speeding into a pedestrian mall, ploughing into people, police said. A shop video showed several people diving into a convenience store as the car raced along the footpath.

“We witnessed about half a dozen people that ricocheted off the car one way or another. I saw one person fly up almost roof level of the car as they got thrown up against one of the retail stores,” Sharn Baylis, 46, told Reuters by telephone.

“You could hear the gasping and the screaming from people, then you just started hearing the screams and the crying as it sunk in,” she said.

Baylis said she rushed across tram tracks and with other bystanders and gave cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) first aid to a badly hurt man who had been run over.

“I think it was pretty much in vain at that point. The seriousness of his injuries, he was probably the worst I saw.”

One of the dead was a child. Four children, including a three-month-old baby, were taken to Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, said a hospital spokesman.

“We’re not regarding this as a terrorism-related incident,” Victoria state police commissioner Graham Ashton told reporters on Friday.

Police had earlier chased the driver, who was wanted over a domestic assault and driving offences, Ashton said.

‘GUNS DRAWN’

Video from a witness showed a maroon colored car driving around in circles in an intersection outside Flinders St railway station in the city’s central business district, with the driver shouting at people and hanging his arm out the window.

Two people approached the car, apparently trying to stop it before it drove off with police chasing. (For a graphic, click http://tmsnrt.rs/2jTj2Y9)

Witness Maria Kitjapanon told Melbourne’s Age newspaper that police eventually rammed the car.

“There were probably 10 police surrounding that guy’s car, with guns drawn, and they fired into the car. Then they dragged someone out via the passengers side, then all 10 of them sat on top of him,” she said.

Melbourne is hosting the Australian Open tennis grand slam and is packed with thousands of tourists, only a few blocks from where the incident occurred. Police said the tennis tournament continued as normal.

Australia, a staunch U.S. ally, has been on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown radicals since 2014 and authorities have said they have thwarted a number of plots. There have been several “lone wolf” assaults, including a 2014 cafe siege in Sydney that left two hostages and the gunman dead.

Friday’s incident initially raised fears about the possibility of another attack.

Last year, in attacks claimed by Islamic State, trucks were driven into crowded pedestrian precincts in separate incidents in Nice and Berlin, killing scores.

(Reporting by Tom Westbrook and Jamie Freed in Sydney, Sonali Paul in Melbourne; Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

Unclear whether truck attack in Israel inspired by Islamic State

Relatives and friends mourn the death of 4 Israeli soldiers

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s government has been quick to suggest a Palestinian who rammed a truck into a group of Israeli soldiers at the weekend was inspired by Islamic State, raising questions over how it came to that conclusion.

Hours after the attack on Sunday, which killed four soldiers and wounded 17, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the assailant showed all the signs of being a supporter of the ultra-hardline Sunni movement.

He did not give details but Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman cited parallels with Islamic State-inspired attacks on crowds using trucks in Germany and France last year.

“We saw it in France, we saw it in Berlin and unfortunately we saw it today in Jerusalem,” he said during a visit to the scene overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City.

In Israel, multiple voices were quick to point out the differences between Palestinian violence and that perpetrated by Islamic State. While Islam may inspire some Palestinian assailants, political motivations around Israel’s occupation and the long-running conflict remain the dominant factor.

“Palestinian attacks are overwhelmingly motivated by nationalism, not by religion,” said Orit Perlov, a social media expert and research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

“Israel is trying to generalize the phenomenon, saying everyone faces the same threat. But while the symptoms may be similar, the causes are completely different.”

In Europe there is sympathy and support for Israel and the deadly threats it faces, but also cautiousness about close comparisons.

Over the past 18 months, Netanyahu has repeatedly described a wave of Palestinian attacks on Israelis as part of the same violent Islamist campaign afflicting Europe, saying Israel, France and Germany are in the same boat, and that Israel’s frontline position needs to be better understood.

“They might have different names — ISIS, Boko Haram, Hamas, Al Shabab, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah — but all of them are driven by the same hatred and bloodthirsty fanaticism,” Netanyahu said in January last year. “We understand we are in a common battle for our values and a common battle for our future.”

Sunday’s statement was the clearest link Netanyahu had made between a Palestinian attacker and Islamic State, although he did not say the group planned it or that the assailant, who was shot dead at the scene, was an Islamic State operative.

Yossi Melman, an analyst writing in Ma’ariv newspaper, said there was little evidence to suggest the Palestinian attacker had drawn inspiration from Islamic State, pointing out that Palestinians carried out car-ramming attacks before ISIS.

“This is essentially a case of unaffiliated terrorists, young people … who do not belong to any organization and decide on their own, often on a whim and with no prior preparations, to commit a terror attack,” he said.

QUID PRO QUO?

Others said it made sense for Netanyahu to try to draw a direct link between the threats Israel faces and those in Europe, but that it was unlikely to convince policymakers.

“There are no signs that Europe as a whole will stop considering the occupation as the main cause for Palestinian terrorism,” said Ilan Jonas, chief executive of Prime Source, an Israeli political and security consultancy.

Europe is not about to “adopt Netanyahu’s line that this is part of a universal phenomenon that is totally unrelated to Israel’s policies in the West Bank,” he said.

As is common, Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, praised Sunday’s attack. But the Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was more circumspect. Its security forces even carried out raids in some areas, supporting Israel’s clampdown.

Adnan al-Dmairi, spokesman of the Palestinian security services in the West Bank, dismissed any suggestion Islamic State had a foothold in the territory.

“There is no presence for ISIS as an organization in the West Bank,” he told Reuters, while acknowledging some people expressed support on Facebook or other social media. “There is nothing of such a name as ISIS in the Palestinian areas.”

Data tends to back that up. Figures collected by Israel’s security establishment show Palestinian support for ISIS declining, said Perlov of the INSS, with the level falling from 14 percent in 2014-15 to eight percent last year.

“The trend is downwards. Even if there was some low-level support for IS at the peak when it seized control of Mosul, that has dropped away,” said Perlov.

Some Israeli Arabs — no more than a couple of dozen, analysts say — have tried to go and join Islamic State in Syria or Iraq, but that number is a fraction of the Muslims that have gone from Britain, Belgium, France or the Netherlands.

For Europe, Israel’s generalization of the terrorism threat presents a problem, said Andrea Frontini, an analyst at the European Policy Centre, because it risks over-politicizing counter-terrorism cooperation.

On the one hand, Europe needs and wants closer cooperation with Israel when it comes to tackling rising security threats, she said. But Europe does not want to feel like it has soften its approach on other issues, such as the Middle East peace process and Israel’s occupation, in order to show solidarity.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Writing by Luke Baker)

At least four dead in Palestinian truck attack in Jerusalem

Rescue workers carry the body of a victim from the scene where police said a Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem

By Jeffrey Heller and Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem on Sunday, killing four of them in an attack that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said is likely to have been inspired by Islamic State.

It was the deadliest Palestinian attack in Jerusalem in months and targeted officer cadets as they disembarked from a bus that brought them to the Armon Hanatziv promenade, which has a panoramic view of the walled Old City.

The military said that a female officer and three officer cadets were killed and that 17 others were injured. Police said three of the dead were women.

Israeli soldiers work at the scene where police said a Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem

Israeli soldiers work at the scene where police said a Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem January 8, 2017. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Police identified the truck driver as a Palestinian from Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem and said he was shot dead. His uncle, Abu Ali, named him as Fadi Ahmad Hamdan Qunbor, 28, a father of four from the Jabel Mukabar neighborhood.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that nine Jabel Mukabar residents, including five members of the attacker’s family, were arrested on suspicion of aiding the attacker.

The Israeli military regularly takes soldiers on educational tours of Jerusalem, including the Armon Hanatziv vantage point.

Netanyahu visited the scene and convened his security cabinet, a forum of senior ministers, to discuss Israel’s response. He said that security forces were controlling access in and out of the neighborhood.

“We know the identity of the attacker. According to all the signs he is a supporter of Islamic State,” the prime minister said.

A government source said that ministers had called for the demolition of the attacker’s home and for his body not to be returned to the family for burial. It also decided to detain without trial persons expressing sympathy for Islamic State.

An Israeli soldier escorts another at the scene of a truck ramming incident in Jerusalem January 8, 2017 REUTERS/Ronen ZvulunRoni Alsheich, the national police chief, told reporters he could not rule out that the driver had been motivated by a truck ramming attack in a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people last month.

“It is difficult to get into the head of every individual to determine what prompted him, but there is no doubt that these things do have an effect,” Alsheich told reporters.

In another attack claimed by Islamic State and involving a truck driven into a crowd, nearly 90 people were killed in the French city of Nice in July.

STREET ATTACKS SLOWED

Actions inspired by Islamic State in Israel, the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem have been rare and only a few dozen Arab Israelis and Palestinians are known to have declared their sympathy with the group.

A wave of Palestinian street attacks, including vehicle rammings, has largely slowed but not stopped completely since it began in October 2015, with 37 Israelis and two visiting Americans having been killed in these assaults.

At least 231 Palestinians have been killed in violence in Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the same period. Israel says that at least 157 of them were assailants while others died during clashes and protests, blaming the violence on incitement by the Palestinian leadership.
An Israeli soldier escorts another at the scene of a truck ramming incident in Jerusalem

The Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, denies that allegation, and says assailants have acted out of frustration over Israeli occupation of land sought by Palestinians in peace talks that have stalled since 2014.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, routinely praises those who carry out street attacks, and did so on Sunday.

“We bless this heroic operation resisting the Israeli occupation to force it to stop its crimes and violations against our people,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Reuters.

Security camera footage showed the truck racing towards the soldiers and then reversing into them.

A security guard identified only as “A” told Channel 10 how he shot at the truck and its driver.

“I shot at a tyre but realized there was no point as he has many wheels, so I ran in front of the cabin and at an angle, I shot at him and emptied my magazine,” he said.

“When I finished shooting, some of the officer cadets also took aim and also started firing.”

The footage showed many of the soldiers fleeing the scene as the attack took place, their rifles slung on their shoulders.

As a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, the truck driver would carry an Israeli identity card and be able to move freely through all of the city. Israel considers all of Jerusalem its united capital, a stance not supported by the international community.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller, Maayan Lubell, Ori Lewis, Mustafa Abu Ghaneyeh, and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza,; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and David Goodman)

Fingerprints of Tunisian suspect in Berlin attack found on truck door

Flowers are seen near the scene where a truck ploughed into a crowded Christmas market in the German capital last night in Berlin, Germany,

By Michelle Martin and Michael Nienaber

BERLIN (Reuters) – Investigators found fingerprints of a Tunisian suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack on the door of the truck that ploughed through the crowds, killing 12, German media said on Thursday, as a nationwide manhunt for the migrant was underway.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack in which a truck smashed through wooden huts selling gifts, mulled wine and sausages on Monday evening. It was the deadliest attack on German soil since 1980.

The media did not name their source for the report about 24-year-old Anis Amri’s fingerprints and police declined to comment.

Anis Amri in a combination image released by German police.

Anis Amri in a combination image released by German police. REUTERS/BKA

The Berlin attack has raised concerns across Europe in the approach to Christmas, with markets in France, target of a series of militant attacks over the last year, tightening security with concrete barriers. Troops were also being posted at churches.

The Berlin market reopened on Thursday ringed by concrete bollards.

Police in the western German city of Dortmund arrested four people who had been in contact with Amri, media reports said, but a spokesman for the chief federal prosecutor denied that and said he would give no further details on the operation.

Bild newspaper cited an anti-terrorism investigator as saying it was clear in spring that Amri was looking for accomplices for an attack and was interested in weapons.

ASYLUM REQUEST REJECTED

The report said preliminary proceedings had been opened against Amri in March based on information he was planning a robbery to get money to buy automatic weapons and “possibly carry out an attack”.

In mid-2016, he spoke to two IS fighters and Tunisian authorities listened in on their conversation before informing German authorities. Amri also offered himself as a suicide attacker on known Islamist chat sites, Bild said.

Police started looking for Amri after finding an identity document under the driver’s seat of the truck used in the attack. Authorities have stressed he is just a suspect and not necessarily the driver of the truck.

Broadcaster rbb said the perpetrator lost both his wallet and mobile phone while running away from the attack site.

On Wednesday, Ralf Jaeger, interior minister of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), said the Tunisian appeared to have arrived in Germany in July 2015 and his asylum application had been rejected in June 2016.

Klaus Bouillon, head of the group of interior ministers from Germany’s federal states, said Islamists often left identity documents at attack sites – as was the case in Paris attacks – to steer public opinion against refugees.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has faced calls to tighten asylum procedures since the attack. Armin Schuster of her Christian Democrats, told broadcaster NDR: “We need to send the signal: Only set off for Germany if you have a reason for asylum.”

The Italian Foreign Ministry said an Italian woman named Fabrizia Di Lorenzo was among the victims and the Israeli Foreign Ministry said an Israeli woman called Dalia Elyakim had been identified among the dead.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin, Michael Nienaber, Thorsten Severin, Victoria Bryan in Berlin and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Mazar-i-Sharif,Afghanistan; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Australian police say blast at Christian group’s HQ not politically motivated

The damaged entrance to the offices of the Australian Christian Lobby Group in Canberra, Australia,

By James Regan

SYDNEY, (Reuters) – Australian police said on Thursday an explosion caused when a van drove into the headquarters of a conservative Christian lobby group in the national capital, Canberra, was not politically or religiously motivated.

The 35-year-old Australian driver of the van, which was carrying gas-filled cylinders, walked into a nearby hospital suffering severe burns and was in critical condition, Australian Capital Territory Police Commander Mark Walters said.

” … As a result of our conversations with the male driver of the vehicle, we have established that the actions of this individual are not politically, religiously or ideologically motivated,” Walters told reporters.

Walters would not elaborate further.

The driver of the truck ignited gas-filled canisters before smashing into the building that acts as headquarters for the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), which has been an outspoken critic of abortion and same-sex marriage.

ACL managing director Lyle Shelton posted a photograph on Twitter showing the burned-out van in front of the group’s headquarters. He said no staff were injured.

“I don’t know the motivation of last night’s attack, but the context of what I see here is in the context of multiple death threats and threats of violence that my staff have endured over the course of this year,” Shelton told reporters.

(Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Paul Tait)