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Wednesday June 7, 2017

BRITISH police have named the third London Bridge attacker as 22-year-old Youssef Zaghba, and said that he is believed to be an Italian national of Moroccan descent.

Police said yesterday he lived in east London and that his family has been notifi ed, adding that he was not a “subject of interest” to police or the intel-ligence services.

The other two attackers were named Monday as Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Red-ouane. Butt, 27, was a British citizen born in Pakistan who had already been investigated by police and Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5.

“However, there was no intel-ligence to suggest that this attack was being planned, and the investigation had been priori-tized accordingly,” police said.

Redouane, 30, went by the alias Rachid Elkhdar and claimed to be Moroccan or Libyan, police said. He and Butt lived in the same area of east London.

The identity of the last attacker in Saturday’s attack that left seven dead and dozens wounded came as a new search was under way in a neighborhood in east London near the home of two of the London Bridge attackers. The search in Ilford, just north of Barking, is seeking to deter-mine whether the group had accomplices.

London police have said all 12 people held since the attack late Saturday from the Barking neighborhood, have been freed.

The attack, the third in Britain in three months, has raised ques-tions over the government’s abil-ity to protect Britain following cuts to police numbers in recent years. The issue has become a key one in the run-up to tomorrow’s general election.

Prime Minister Theresa May, who called the snap election in hopes of strengthening her mandate for discussions over Britain’s exit from the European Union, has come under fi re for the cuts to police numbers over recent years. (SD-Agencies)

INDIA and Pakistan will be accepted as members of the Shanghai Cooperation Orga-nization (SCO) this week at a summit to be attended by President Xi Jinping in Astana, Kazakhstan, the China Daily reported yesterday.

The move will make the SCO one of the biggest regional orga-nizations, covering about half of the world’s population.

The two new countries will go through offi cial procedures to become members during the 17th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the SCO, Assistant Foreign Minister Li Huilai said at a news conference in Beijing on Monday.

Xi will make a state visit to Kazakhstan at the invitation of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev from today to Sat-urday. He will attend the SCO summit and the opening cer-emony of Astana Expo 2017.

India and Pakistan’s acces-sion to the SCO will increase the organization’s global impact and representative nature, Li said, adding that the coopera-tion potential and scope of the organization will be increased.

By accepting the two coun-tries, the SCO will expand its geographical coverage to South Asia. It will account for three-fi fths of the area of Eurasia, he added.

The SCO launched acces-sion procedures for India and Pakistan in July 2015 at the Ufa summit in Russia. At the SCO’s Tashkent summit in Uzbekistan in June 2016, SCO members signed the memorandum on the obligations for India and Pakistan to obtain membership in the SCO.

China will have the rotating presidency of the SCO next year. Xi will talk with other leaders at the summit about making the SCO stronger and a bigger contributor to global peace and stability, Li said.

During Xi’s visit, China and Kazakhstan will sign coopera-tion documents in such areas as production capacity, invest-ment, fi nance and trade, Li said. (SD-Agencies)

A U.S. army veteran who had been fi red in April from his job at a Florida company opened fi re Monday at the Orlando business, killing fi ve people before taking his own life, authorities said.

Four people were killed at the scene, while a fi fth died at the hos-pital, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings told reporters. Seven people survived the ordeal.

The business, Fiamma, makes awnings and other accesso-

ries for recreational vehicles.Demings said the incident

was being treated as a “work-place violence incident” and did not appear to have any links to terror.

The 45-year-old shooter, iden-tifi ed by police as army veteran John Robert Neumann Jr., had a semiautomatic handgun and two knives in his possession. All of the dead were former co-workers.

Shelley Adams, a resident of the area, told local media her sister worked at the fi rm and had been in the bathroom when she heard shooting.

“She came out and saw a man on the fl oor,” Adams said.

The woman then called her sister on the telephone and kept saying, “My boss is dead. My boss is dead,” Adams said.

The assailant had allegedly beaten up another employee

at the business in 2014, but no charges were fi led, the sheriff told reporters.

“It is a sad day for us here once again in Orange County,” Dem-ings said.

A year ago, Orlando — a hub of Florida’s resort industry popular with tourists — was the scene of a mass shooting in a gay night-club that left 49 people dead and dozens more wounded.

(SD-Agencies)

ONCE the Balkan stronghold of pro-Russian sentiments, tiny Montenegro was silently celebrating its entry into NATO on Monday in a historic turn that has made the Kremlin furious.

Despite the Russian anger and a deep split within the nation of some 620,000 people over the issue, Montenegro formally became the 29th member of the Western military alliance at a ceremony in Washington on Monday.

To get there, Montenegro has stood up against its former ally Russia, which has sought to

maintain strong historic, politi-cal and cultural infl uence in the Slavic country it considers a special zone of interest.

The U.S. State Department said Montenegro’s membership “will support greater integration, democratic reform, trade, secu-rity, and stability with all of its neighbors.”

Russia has threatened eco-nomic and political retalia-tion, including a campaign to undermine the Montenegrin tourism industry, which relies heavily on Russian visitors. An estimated 200,000 Russians

visit Montenegro a year and 80,000 Russians own property in the country.

Russia has also banned imports of Montenegrin wine and recently deported a ranking offi cial from a Moscow airport.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova recently warned potential Rus-sian tourists that “there is an anti-Russian hysteria in Mon-tenegro.”

“We do not rule out the pos-sibility of provocations, arrests for suspicious reasons or extradition to third countries”

of Russians, Zakharova said.Montenegro says Moscow was

behind a foiled coup attempt in October that allegedly targeted former Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, who was the driving force behind the country’s NATO bid. Russia denies involvement.

“One of the reasons we are joining NATO is to create greater stability, not only for Monte-negrin citizens, but also for foreign investors and tourists,” Djukanovic said. “Therefore, our goal is to bring even more Russian tourists.”

(SD-Agencies)

Montenegro joins NATO as Russia fumes British police name three attackers

AUSTRALIAN police said yes-terday that they were treating a deadly shooting and siege in Melbourne as a terrorist inci-dent after the Islamic State group claimed responsibility.

A man of Somali background was killed in a gunbattle with police when he opened fi re after taking an escort girl hostage at an apartment block in the city Monday evening.

It is alleged Yacqub Khayre, 29, had fi rst killed a Chinese-born Australian man in the foyer.

Police said he had made statements “around al-Qaida” and called a local television sta-

tion making similar comments, reportedly saying: “This is for IS, this is for al-Qaida.”

“We’re treating this as a ter-rorism incident,” Victoria Police chief commissioner Graham Ashton said, but added that investigations were still ongo-ing into whether it was planned or random.

The Amaq news agency — which is affi liated with the so-called Islamic State group — carried a statement claiming responsibility.

Ashton said IS “always tend to jump up and claim responsibility every time something happens” and it was too early to determine

whether they were involved.Authorities had responded to

reports of an explosion at the building — which turned out to be a gunshot — in the affl uent beach suburb of Brighton and arrived to fi nd a dead body in the foyer.

“Subsequently he (Khayre) came out of the apartment with a shotgun and commenced to fi re at police at the entry-way to the apartments...” Ashton said.

“He’s exchanged gunfi re with police and has been fatally shot by police at the scene.”

The escort escaped unharmed but three police were hurt in the fi refi ght. (SD-Agencies)

A bomb squad member walks outside the site of a shooting at Buckingham Serviced Apartments in Brighton, Melbourne, Australia, yesterday. SD-Agencies

From L: Khuram Shazad Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba.

Pakistan,India tojoin SCO

Disgruntled employee kills fi ve, self in Florida shooting

Police treat Melbourne siege as ‘terrorism’