RTTue, 31 Oct 2017 20:27 UTC
© Andrew Kelly / ReutersEmergency crews attend the scene of an alleged shooting incident on West Street in Manhattan, New York, U.S., October 31 2017.
Multiple people were killed and injured in a shooting and vehicle attack near the World Trade Center memorial in the lower Manhattan neighborhood of Tribeca in New York City, following an incident near Stuyvesant High School. Police have the gunman in custody.
Police said that a vehicle entered the bike path "a few blocks north of Chambers Street" where it "struck multiple people."They added there there are "several" fatalities and "numerous" people injured.
A person in a truck reportedly ran over some pedestrians and bicyclists, and then opened gunfire.
There are multiple fatalities, according to reports citing local authorities.
Police say there is no longer a threat to the public.
Police
told residents to avoid West Street from Barclay Street to a Christopher Street, citing an "ongoing investigation"and also instructed locals to "expect many emergency personnel in the area."
At least two people were fatally shot in Lower Manhattan Tuesday afternoon by a gunman firing from his truck, police sources told the
New York Post.
A video taken at the scene shows multiple injured bikers on the ground. The poster said they they were hit by a truck.
Witnesses saw a truck hit several people, the Associated Press reported. An AP photographer reported seeing two motionless bodies covered with tarps.
The gunman, who is in police custody, shot at least six people at West Street and Chambers Street, which is near Stuyvesant High School, at 3:15 p.m.
"What happened was there was a car crash... he came out of one of the cars. He had two guns. He was running around Chambers and somebody started to chase him," a 14-year-old student at the nearby Stuyvesant High School told the
Post. "I heard four to six gunshots - everybody starts running."
Comment: The suspect is
Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old Uzbek native living in the States since 2010 - his residence was Tampa, FL, according to his driver's license. Since 2010 he has lived in Ohio, Florida, and New Jersey. He came to the U.S. on a "diversity visa program", which targets people from countries with historically low immigration rates to the U.S. According to the
NY Post, authorities found "either an IS flag or an image of the flag along with his note pledging allegiance to the terrorist organization" in the vehicle.
On Tuesday, the New York Post interviewed Kobiljon Matkarov, 37, a friend of Saipov, who described him as "very friendly" and a "very good guy."
"My kids like him too, he is always playing with them. He is playing all the time," Matkarov said.
Matkarov told the Post that Saipov worked as an Uber driver and he did not know him to have any connections to terrorist organizations.
Governor Cuomo said this was a lone wolf attack. So far that looks to be the case, but isn't it too early to make such a definitive statement?
Witnesses say Saipov emerged from the truck yelling "Allahu Akbar". The weapons initially reported as guns turned out to be a BB gun and a paint gun.
The attack is being treated as a terror attack by authorities. Trump tweeted:
November 1 UpdatesAmong the dead: five Argentinian friends vacationing in the city, and a Belgian woman visiting Manhattan with family. Uzbek President Mirziyoyev has promised Trump that his country is "read to use all its resources and means to assist in investigation of this terrorist act." (As a Central Asian nation, Uzbekistan has long been a target of NATO's "Gladio B" operation, i.e. covert support of jihadists using assets
like Fethullah Gulen.)
A longtime acquaintance of Saipov, Mirrakhmat Muminov, told RFE/RL he was shocked at the news, but recounted "verbal run-ins" Saipov had with others in the Uzbek community, calling him "a little aggressive":
Mirrakhmat Muminov, a fellow Uzbek and permanent U.S. resident who met the 29-year-old suspect shortly after Saipov arrived in the state of Ohio in 2010, added in comments to RFE/RL that the fresh émigré was not "[very] religious" when he arrived. Saipov lived within a community of several dozen Uzbek families in Stow, Ohio, from 2011-13 and attended the local mosque "once [in] a while," Muminov said. He said he last saw Saipov about two years ago, in Ohio, although he spoke to him as recently as two months ago.
...
Muminov said of the allegations that "no one understands how he became a terrorist" but speculated that Saipov might have been radicalized after moving to Florida in 2013. Muminov said Saipov appeared to have been educating himself on Islam and might have found extremist Islamic literature online.
...
An ethnic Uzbek acquaintance of Saipov's in Ohio who asked not to be identified told RFE/RL's Uzbek Service on November 1 that he had had "an argument on a religious issue" several months ago with Saipov and that the latter displayed "very radical views."
"After that argument, he stopped contacting us," the source said. "We warned him over his radical views."
The same source said Saipov "seemed to be in depression," adding, "He kept everything inside him. He isolated himself from the outside world."
Retired US Army General Paul Vellely
told RT that even if Saipov was a lone wolf radicalized in the States, this is still an attack in a war waged by ISIS supporters against the entire Western world. (Actually it's a war on the entire world outside of ISIS, East included.) However, even then he disagrees with the term "lone wolf":
"These are not lone wolves, they are part of being a jihad, being a warrior for Islam... The tactics they use is terrorism.
"We have to realize that this is active jihad. This is a war against the West, this is the war against the United States... This is the caliphate trying to expand, to be more powerful," Vallely said.
It's not necessary for the attacker to have been to a war zone to be indoctrinated, as they can be as easily radicalized on home turf, he added.
"We have noticed almost, I think, ten training sites in the US right now and I'm certain they are all over Europe as well," Vallely said.
Problem is, elements within the intelligence services are totally on board with "active jihad", and actively support it. FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley:
"Police are quite desperate now in trying to assure the public that they can keep them safe, but the truth is unless they really examine some of the root causes for this, which go back now decades, there's not going to be any change, we are just going to see one incident after the other, and the police authorities are going to be rather helpless in the face of it."
...
"Some of those countries, for instance, Iraq, obviously, Syria, Libya was another one, some of those countries had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, ISIS-type Islamic extremism. Some of these countries that the US had chosen to target were actually the countries that were a buffer between Al-Qaeda terrorism and were enemies of it," Rowley said.
"So you see almost everything being done wrong after 9/11, and we get to this really sad state 16 years later. Perpetual war."
See also:
Comment: The suspect is Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old Uzbek native living in the States since 2010 - his residence was Tampa, FL, according to his driver's license. Since 2010 he has lived in Ohio, Florida, and New Jersey. He came to the U.S. on a "diversity visa program", which targets people from countries with historically low immigration rates to the U.S. According to the NY Post, authorities found "either an IS flag or an image of the flag along with his note pledging allegiance to the terrorist organization" in the vehicle.
Governor Cuomo said this was a lone wolf attack. So far that looks to be the case, but isn't it too early to make such a definitive statement?
Witnesses say Saipov emerged from the truck yelling "Allahu Akbar". The weapons initially reported as guns turned out to be a BB gun and a paint gun.
The attack is being treated as a terror attack by authorities. Trump tweeted:
November 1 Updates
Among the dead: five Argentinian friends vacationing in the city, and a Belgian woman visiting Manhattan with family. Uzbek President Mirziyoyev has promised Trump that his country is "read to use all its resources and means to assist in investigation of this terrorist act." (As a Central Asian nation, Uzbekistan has long been a target of NATO's "Gladio B" operation, i.e. covert support of jihadists using assets like Fethullah Gulen.)
A longtime acquaintance of Saipov, Mirrakhmat Muminov, told RFE/RL he was shocked at the news, but recounted "verbal run-ins" Saipov had with others in the Uzbek community, calling him "a little aggressive": Retired US Army General Paul Vellely told RT that even if Saipov was a lone wolf radicalized in the States, this is still an attack in a war waged by ISIS supporters against the entire Western world. (Actually it's a war on the entire world outside of ISIS, East included.) However, even then he disagrees with the term "lone wolf": Problem is, elements within the intelligence services are totally on board with "active jihad", and actively support it. FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley: See also: