World
Video shows Akron police kill Black man in hail of gunfire
A Black man was unarmed when Akron police chased him on foot and killed him in a hail of gunfire, but officers believed he had shot at them earlier from a vehicle and feared he was preparing to fire again, authorities said Sunday at a news conference.
Akron police released video of the shooting of Jayland Walker, 25, who was killed June 27 in a pursuit that had started with an attempted traffic stop. The mayor called the shooting “heartbreaking” while asking for patience from the community.
It's not clear how many shots were fired by the eight officers involved, but Walker sustained more than 60 wounds. An attorney for Walker's family said officers kept firing even after he was on the ground.
Read: Protests erupt in Michigan after police officer kills black man: U.S. media
Officers attempted to stop Walker's car around 12:30 a.m. for unspecified traffic and equipment violations, but less than a minute into a pursuit, the sound of a shot was heard from the car, and a transportation department camera captured what appeared to be a muzzle flash coming from the vehicle, Akron Police Chief Steve Mylett said. That changed the nature of the case from “a routine traffic stop to now a public safety issue," he said.
Police body camera videos show what unfolded after the roughly six-minute pursuit. Several shouting officers with guns drawn approach the slowing car on foot, as it rolls up over a curb and onto a sidewalk. A person wearing a ski mask exits the passenger door and runs toward a parking lot. Police chase him for about 10 seconds before officers fire from multiple directions, in a burst of shots that lasts 6 or 7 seconds.
At least one officer had tried first to use a stun gun, but that was unsuccessful, police said.
Mylett said Walker’s actions are hard to distinguish on the video in real time, but a still photo seems to show him “going down to his waist area” and another appears to show him turning toward an officer. He said a third picture “captures a forward motion of his arm.”
In a statement shared Sunday with reporters, the local police union said the officers thought there was an immediate threat of serious harm, and that it believes their actions and the number of shots will be found justified in line with their training and protocols. The union said the officers are cooperating with the investigation.
Police said more than 60 wounds were found on Walker’s body but further investigation is needed to determine exactly how many rounds the officers fired and how many times Walker was hit.
The footage released by police ends with the officers' gunfire and doesn't show what happened next. Officers provided aid, and one can be heard saying Walker still had a pulse, but he was later pronounced dead, Mylett said.
The chief said an officer firing at someone has to be “ready to explain why they did what they did, they need to be able to articulate what specific threats they were facing ... and they need to be held to account.” But he said he is withholding judgment on their actions until they give their statements.
Read: Facebook sorry for ‘primates’ label on video of Black men
A handgun, a loaded magazine and an apparent wedding ring were found on the seat of the car. A casing consistent with the weapon was later found in the area where officers believed a shot had come from the vehicle.
State Attorney General Dave Yost vowed a “complete, fair and expert investigation" by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and cautioned that “body-worn camera footage is just one view of the whole picture."
Akron police are conducting a separate internal investigation about whether the officers violated department rules or policies.
The officers involved in the shooting are on paid administrative leave, which is standard practice in such cases. Seven of them are white, and one is Black, according to the department. Their length of service with Akron police ranges from one-and-a-half to six years, and none of them has a record of discipline, substantiated complaints or fatal shootings, it said.
Demonstrators marched peacefully through the city and gathered in front of the Akron justice center after the video was released. NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement that Walker’s death wasn't self-defense, but “was murder. Point blank.”
Late Sunday, police in full riot gear fired a dozen tear gas cannisters to disperse a handful of protesters outside the justice center, WKYC-TV reported.
Walker’s family is calling for accountability but also for peace, their lawyers said. One of the attorneys, Bobby DiCello, called the burst of police gunfire excessive and unreasonable, and said police handcuffed Walker before trying to provide first aid.
“How it got to this with a pursuit is beyond me,” DiCello said.
He said Walker’s family doesn’t know why he fled from police. Walker was grieving the recent death of his fiancee, but his family had no indication of concern beyond that, and he wasn't a criminal, DiCello said.
“I hope we remember that as Jayland ran across that parking lot, he was unarmed,” DiCello said.
He said he doesn’t know whether the gold ring found near the gun in the car belonged to Walker.
Russia claims control of pivotal eastern Ukrainian province
Russia claimed control Sunday over the last Ukrainian stronghold in an eastern province that is key to achieving a major goal of Moscow's grinding war.
The General Staff of Ukraine's military reported that its forces had withdrawn from Lysychansk in Luhansk province. President Volodymr Zelenskyy acknowledged the withdrawal but said the fight for the city was still raging on its outskirts.
If confirmed, Russia's complete seizure of Luhansk would provide its troops with a stronger base from which to press their advance in the Donbas, a region of mines and factories that President Vladimir Putin is bent on capturing in a campaign that could determine the course of the entire war.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin that Russia’s troops, with a local separatist militia, “have established full control over the city of Lysychansk” and now hold all of Luhansk, according to a ministry statement published Sunday.
Read:Russia's defense minister reports capture of Ukraine city
As is typical with such descriptions, the Russian statement characterized the victories as “the liberation of the Luhansk People’s Republic.” Separatists in Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk, which make up the Donbas and are home to significant Russian-speaking populations, declared independence from Kyiv in 2014 and their forces have battled Ukrainian troops there ever since. Russia formally recognized the self-proclaimed republics days before its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian and Russian forces fought fiercely for Lysychansk in recent days after the neighboring city fell last week. On Sunday evening, the General Staff of Ukraine's military confirmed on social media that its forces had withdrawn from Lysychansk “to preserve the lives of Ukrainian defenders.”
In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy noted the withdrawal. But he added that “Ukraine does not give anything back” and vowed to return with more modern weapons. Citing his forces' success in recapturing other territory, he promised, “There will be a day when we will say the same about Donbas.”
Earlier, Zelenskyy said Kyiv's forces were still battling Russian soldiers on Lysychansk’s outskirts “in a very difficult and dangerous situation.”
“We cannot give you the final judgment. Lysychansk is still being fought for,” Zelenskyy told a news conference in Kyiv given alongside Australia's visiting prime minister. He noted that territory can move quickly from one side to the other.
Russian forces maintain an advantage in the area, he acknowledged, calling it a Ukrainian military “weak spot.”
The capture of Lysychansk would give the Russians more territory from which to intensify attacks on Donetsk. In recent weeks, Russian forces were thought to hold about half of Donetsk, but it's not clear where things stand now.
If Russia prevails in the Donbas, Ukraine would lose not only land but perhaps the bulk of its most capable military forces, opening the way for Moscow to grab more territory and strengthen its ability to dictate terms to Kyiv.
Read:Russian missiles kill at least 19 in Ukraine’s Odesa region
Since failing to take Kyiv and other areas in northern and central Ukraine early in the war, Russia has focused on the Donbas, unleashing fierce shelling and engaging in house-to-house combat that devastated Lysychansk, neighboring Sievierodonetsk and nearby villages. Few details emerged from either city during the battles, which decimated their populations as people were killed or fled.
Already Russian forces appeared to be pushing their advance in Donetsk, concentrating rocket attacks on the sizable Ukrainian-held city of Slovyansk, where at least six people were killed, regional government spokeswoman Tatyana Ignatchenko told Ukrainian TV.
Kramatorsk, another major city in the Donetsk region, also came under fire, the regional administration said.
Far from the fighting in the east, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Sunday visited a town near the capital that was severely damaged early in the war. Albanese called the destruction in Irpin “devastating."
"These are homes and these are livelihoods and indeed lives that have been lost here in this town,” he said.
Meanwhile, the exiled mayor of the Russia-occupied city of Melitopol said Sunday that Ukrainian rockets destroyed one of four Russian military bases in the city.
Attacks were also reported inside Russia, in a revival of sporadic apparent Ukrainian strikes across the border. The governor of the Belgorod region in Western Russia said fragments of an intercepted Ukrainian missile killed four people Sunday. In the Russian city of Kursk, two Ukrainian drones were shot down, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
Kursk regional governor Roman Starovoit said the town of Tetkino, on the Ukraine border, came under mortar fire.
With no fuel and no cash, Sri Lanka keeps schools closed
Cash-strapped Sri Lanka on Sunday extended school closures for one week because there isn't enough fuel for teachers and parents to get children to classrooms, and the energy minister appealed to the country's expatriates to send money home through banks to finance new oil purchases.
A huge foreign debt has left the Indian Ocean island with none of the suppliers willing to sell fuel on credit. The available stocks, sufficient for only several days, will be provided for essential services, including health and port workers, public transport and food distribution, officials said.
”Finding money is a challenge. It’s a huge challenge,” Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera told reporters.
Read: Gas lines and scuffles: Sri Lanka faces humanitarian crisis
He said the government has ordered new fuel stocks and the first ship with 40,000 metric tons of diesel is expected to arrive on Friday while the first ship carrying gasoline would come on July 22.
Several other fuel shipments are in the pipeline. But he said authorities are struggling to find $587 million to pay for the fuel. Wijesekera said that Sri Lanka owed about $800 million to seven fuel suppliers.
Last month, schools were closed nationwide for a day due to fuel shortages and had remained closed for the last two weeks in urban areas. Schools will remain shut until Friday.
Authorities also announced countrywide power cuts of up to three hours a day from Monday because they can’t supply enough fuel to power generating stations. Sweeping power cuts have been a blight on Sri Lanka's economy for months, along with severe shortages of essentials including cooking gas, medicine and food imports.
Wijesekera said the main problem is the lack of dollars and appealed to some 2 million Sri Lankans working abroad to send their foreign exchange earnings home through banks instead of informal channels.
He said workers’ remittances, which usually stood at $600 million per month, had declined to $318 million in June.
According to the Central Bank, the remittances — the nation’s main foreign exchange earner — dropped from $2.8 billion in the first six months of 2021 to $1.3 billion in the same period this year for a decline of 53%.
Read: Senior US officials visit Sri Lanka to help resolve crisis
The drop came after the government last year ordered the mandatory conversion of foreign currency. It said that black-market premiums have led people to hoard foreign currency.
Sri Lanka's has been getting most of its fuel needs from neighboring India, which provided it with a credit line. The government said it was also negotiating with suppliers in Russia and Malaysia.
Sri Lanka has suspended repayment of about $7 billion in foreign loans due this year out of $25 billion to be repaid by 2026. The country’s total foreign debt is $51 billion.
The economic meltdown has triggered a political crisis with widespread anti-government protests erupting across the country. Protesters have blocked main roads to demand gas and fuel, and television stations showed people in some areas fighting over limited stocks.
In the capital, Colombo, protesters have been occupying the entrance to the president’s office for more than two months to demand President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's resignation. They accuse him and his powerful family that included several siblings holding top government positions of plunging the country into the crisis through corruption and misrule.
After 3 feet of rain, 32,000 in Sydney area may need to flee
More than 30,000 residents of Sydney and its surrounds have been told to evacuate or prepare to abandon their homes on Monday as Australia’s largest city braces for what could be its worst flooding in 18 months.
Parts of the city of 5 million people are facing a fourth flooding emergency in a year and a half after torrential rain since Friday caused dams to overflow and waterways to break their banks.
“The latest information we have is that there’s a very good chance that the flooding will be worse than any of the other three floods that those areas had in the last 18 months,” Emergency Management Minister Murray Watt told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Read: 500,000 people on flood alert as rain lashes Sydney
The current flooding might affect areas that managed to stay dry during the previous floods, Watt added.
New South Wales state Premier Dominic Perrottet said 32,000 people were impacted by evacuation orders and warnings.
“You’d probably expect to see that number increase over the course of the week,” Perrottet said.
Emergency services had made 116 flood rescues in recent days, 83 of them since 9 p.m. Sunday, he said. Hundreds more requests for help were made by Monday morning.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology manager Jane Golding said some areas between Newcastle, north of Sydney, and Wollongong, south of Sydney had received more than a meter (39 inches) of rain in the previous 24 hours. Some has received more than 1.5 meters (59 inches).
“The system that has been generating this weather does show signs that it will ease tomorrow, but throughout today, expect more rain,” Golding said.
Rain was forecast across New South Wales's coast, including Sydney, all week, she said.
The flooding danger was highest along the Hawkesbury River, in northwest Sydney, and the Nepean River in Sydney’s west.
“The water is flowing really quickly,” Golding said. “It’s dangerous out on the rivers and we do have some more rain to fall which means the flash-flood risk is not over yet.”
State Emergency Services Commissioner Carlene York said strong winds had toppled trees, damaging rooves and blocking roads. She advised against unnecessary travel.
Theresa Fedeli, mayor of the Camden municipality on the Nepean River southwest of Sydney, said the repeated flooding was taking a toll on members of her community.
“It's just devastating. They just keep on saying ‘devastating, not again,'” Fedeli said.
“I just keep on saying ... ‘We've got to be strong, we will get through this.” But you know deep down it's really hitting home hard to a lot of people," she added.
Read:Australia commits to reducing greenhouse emissions by 43%
Perrottet said government and communities needed to adapt to major flooding becoming more common across Australia’s most populous state.
“We’re seeing these flood events more regularly, there’s no doubt about that,” Perrottet said.
"To see what we’re seeing right across Sydney, there’s no doubt these events are becoming more common. And governments need to adjust and make sure that we respond to the changing environment that we find ourselves in,” he added.
Gunman fatally shoots 2, wounds 3 Texas cops, takes own life
A gunman killed two people and wounded four others, including three police officers, before taking his own life at a home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, police said Sunday.
Wounds suffered by the four survivors were not life-threatening, police said.
The incident happened about 6:45 p.m. Saturday when officers were answering a report of shots fired in a Haltom City neighborhood, Sgt. Rick Alexander said Sunday. Killed at the reported address were Collin Davis, 33, and Amber Tsai, 32, Alexander said.
Read: Police: Gunfire at mall; no one shot, but 3 hurt fleeing
Tsai was found dead inside the house, while Davis was found dead outside, Alexander said. An older woman who called 911 but was not otherwise identified also suffered a non-life-threatening wound, he said.
Security video shot from a neighboring house screened at a Sunday news conference showed three officers approaching the address when rapid gunfire erupted, wounding three officers. Officers returned fire as the gunman fled the house through a back door. Tracked by air, the gunman identified as 28-year-old Edward Freyman shot himself, Alexander said. Freyman was found with a “military-style rifle” and a handgun, he said.
“This was an ambush situation,” Police Chief Cody Phillips said, adding that if officers “were not prepared for the situation, it would have been a lot worse.”
The gunman and the two people he killed knew one another, but their relationships were not immediately clear, Phillips said.
The wounded officers were Cpl. Zach Tabler and Officers Tim Barton and Jose Avila. Tabler was wounded in the arm, hand and leg; Barton was wounded in the leg; and Avila was wounded in both legs, Phillips said. Barton was treated at a hospital and released Sunday, Phillips said, while Tabler was recovering from surgery and Avila was awaiting surgery.
The Texas Rangers, the state's elite investigative agency, has taken over the investigation. No motive for the shooting was immediately determined.
The incident is one of several recent instances in which law enforcement officers were fired upon while responding to calls.
Read: Gunman kills 3 seniors over potluck dinner at Alabama church
Three officers were shot dead in eastern Kentucky while trying to serve a warrant. Police took a 49-year-old man into custody late Thursday night after an hours-long standoff at a house in Allen, a small town in the hills of Appalachia. He remains jailed on a $10 million bond charged with two counts of murder of a police officer.
In Chicago, a police officer was hospitalized in serious condition after being shot repeatedly in a Friday morning ambush while answering a domestic disturbance report, police Superintendent David Brown said. A suspect was hospitalized awaiting a psychiatric evaluation and is held on a $2 million bond.
Latest migrant caravan breaks up in Mexico after 2 days
Several thousand migrants who set off in southern Mexico with the goal of reaching the United States dissolved their march Sunday after Mexican officials handed out about 3,000 temporary residence permits.
The permits will allow the migrants, mostly Venezuelans and Central Americans, to stay on Mexican territory for up 30 days while they pursue immigration procedures, officials from Mexico's National Institute of Migration said.
“We are going to continue to the United States in buses because we already have the permit. We no longer need to walk,” a Venezuelan, William Molina, said after receiving his permit. He is traveling with 10 relatives.
The group, which had started walking from the border city of Tapachula on Friday, was the ninth migrant caravan to be formed so far this year in southern Mexico.
Read: 9 dead, 40 injured in Mexico pilgrimage bus crash
Migration has returned to the spotlight following the discovery last week of an abandoned cargo truck in San Antonio, Texas, with more than 60 migrants inside. Fifty-three of them died.
The tragedycoincided with a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court allowing the Biden administration to end a measure imposed by President Donald Trump that forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while U.S. officials processed their asylum peitions.
While the migrant caravans have attracted news media attention, those who participate in them represent a small percentage of the migratory flow that arrives at Mexico's border with Guatemala daily, usually with the help of smugglers.
Another Venezuelan in the group, Francisco Daniel Marcano, said he hoped the permit would help him reach northern Mexico and pass into U.S. territory. But, he said, if he fails to get into the U.S., he will try to find a job in northern Mexico to earn money to send to his parents and three children back in Venezuela.
In the last 30 days at least three large groups totaling about 13,000 people have tried to leave the border with Guatemala on foot, according to Mexico's immigration agency.
Many migrants object to the Mexican strategy of keeping them in the south, away from the U.S. border. They say the process of normalizing their status — usually through applying for asylum — takes too long and they can't provide for themsevles while waiting weeks in Tapachula because jobs are scarce.
But the latest caravans, made up mostly of entire families, have managed to advance only about 45 kilometers (28 miles) to Huixtla, where Mexican officials have succeeded in dispersing the groups by giving out temporary residency permits.
From one July Fourth to the next, a steep slide for Biden
Last Fourth of July, President Joe Biden gathered hundreds of people outside the White House for an event that would have been unthinkable for many Americans the previous year. With the coronavirus in retreat, they ate hamburgers and watched fireworks over the National Mall.
Although the pandemic wasn’t over yet, Biden said, “we’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.” Across the country, indoor masking requirements were falling as the number of infections and deaths plummeted.
Within weeks, even some of the president’s allies privately admitted that the speech had been premature. Soon the administration would learn that the delta variant could be transmitted by people who had already been vaccinated. Masks went back on, then came polarizing vaccination mandates. The even-more-contagious omicron variant would arrive months later, infecting millions and causing chaos during the holiday season.
“We were hoping to be free of the virus, and the virus had a lot more in store for us,” said Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The number of people in the United States who died from COVID-19 nearly doubled, from 605,000 to more than 1 million, over the past year.
That sunny speech one year ago marked a crossroads for Biden’s presidency. The pandemic appeared to be waning, the economy was booming, inflation wasn't rising as quickly as today and public approval of his job performance was solid.
As Biden approaches his second Fourth of July in the White House, his standing couldn’t be more different. A series of miscalculations and unforeseen challenges have Biden struggling for footing as he faces a potentially damaging verdict from voters in the upcoming midterm elections. Even problems that weren’t Biden’s fault have been fuel for Republican efforts to retake control of Congress.
The pandemic’s resurgence was swiftly followed last summer by the debacle of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, when the Taliban seized control of the country faster than the administration expected as the U.S.-backed regime collapsed. Then, negotiations over Biden’s broader domestic agenda stalled, only to collapse altogether in December.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February caused a worldwide spike in gas prices, exacerbating inflation that reached a 40-year high. Another blow came last month, when the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion under Roe v. Wade and curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Suddenly a reactive president, Biden has been left trying to reclaim the initiative at every step, often with mixed results. The coronavirus is less of a threat than before and infections are far less likely to lead to death, but Congress is refusing to supply more money to deal with the pandemic.
He signed new gun restrictions into law after massacres in New York and Texas, and he’s leading a reinvestment in European security as the war in Ukraine enters its fifth month. But he has limited tools at his disposal to deal with other challenges, such as rising costs and eroding access to abortion.
“People are grouchy,” said Lindsay Chervinsky, a presidential historian.
The latest poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that his approval rating remains at 39%, the lowest since taking office and a steep slide from 59% one year ago. Only 14% of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction, down from 44%.
Read: Biden suspends rules limiting immigrant arrest, deportation
Douglas Brinkley, another historian, said Biden suffered from a case of presidential hubris after a largely successful run in his first five months in office, which included an overseas trip to meet with allies excited about welcoming a friendly face back to the international scene. He compared Biden’s Fourth of July speech last year to President George W. Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” moment during the second Iraq War.
“He was trying to deliver good news but it didn’t pan out for him,” Brinkley said. “Suddenly, Biden lost a lot of goodwill.”
White House officials reject the comparison, noting that Biden warned about the “powerful” delta variant in his 2021 speech. Chris Meagher, a spokesman, said deaths from the virus are at a record low now, reducing disruptions in workplaces and classrooms.
“Fighting inflation and lowering prices is the president’s number one economic priority, and he’s laser focused on doing everything he can to make sure the economy is working for the American people,” he said. “And we’re in a strong position to transition from our historic jobs recovery to stable and steady growth. Because of the work we’ve done to bring the pandemic under control, COVID is not the disruptive factor it has been for so long.”
The promise to competently address the COVID-19 pandemic is what helped put Biden in the Oval Office and send President Donald Trump to defeat. From the start of Biden's tenure, his public pronouncements were sober and cautious, wary of following his predecessor in predictions that went unfulfilled. The nation’s vaccination program found its stride under Biden, and by April 19, 2021, all adults were eligible to be vaccinated.
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, was an adviser to Biden’s transition team. But as the Fourth of July approached last year, he was worried and felt that the administration wasn’t heeding his warnings.
“Everyone was in this position of wanting to believe it was over with, and not fully understanding or appreciating the potential of the variants,” he said.
Even now, a full year later, Osterholm is reluctant to say what the future holds.
“I want answers too,” he said. “But I don’t know what the variants are going to bring us. I don’t know what human immunity is going to look like.”
Biden said the virus “has not been vanquished" in his Fourth of July speech, and he held another event two days later to talk about the delta variant.
“It seems to me that it should cause everybody to think twice,” he said as he appealed to people who had not yet been vaccinated.
Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University, said there’s more reason to be optimistic this year than last. Immunity from vaccines or previous infections is much more widespread, and antiviral treatments are effective at preventing hospitalization and death in vulnerable patients.
“It was premature to declare independence from COVID-19 last year,” she said. “But this year the country is in a totally different place, and in a much better place.”
But Wen said Biden might be wary, given how things went before.
“The administration is hesitant to make those proclamations now, when actually this is the time to do so,” she said.
Biden’s early strategy of underpromising and overdelivering on COVID-19 was part of a concerted strategy to rebuild the public’s trust in government. The resurgence of the virus eroded some of that trust and diminished confidence in Biden’s job performance.
Rebuilding that has proved difficult, especially as the country faces challenges, some, frustratingly for Biden, outside of his control.
“We expect the president to be all powerful and be able to fix every problem,” said Chervinsky, the presidential historian. “It’s a completely unrealistic expectation and, frankly, a dangerous one.”
President Bill Clinton stumbled through his first two years in office, then faced a wave of Republican victories in his first midterm elections. But he later became the first Democratic president to be reelected since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Chervinsky cautioned that today’s political polarization could make such a rebound more difficult for Biden.
A key question, she said: “Is our partisan system so inflexible that it won’t allow for him to go back?”
3 dead, 3 critically wounded in shooting at Denmark mall
A gunman opened fire inside a busy shopping mall in the Danish capital Sunday, killing three people and critically wounding three others, police said.
A 22-year-old Danish man was arrested after the shooting, Copenhagen police inspector Søren Thomassen told reporters, adding there was no indication that anyone else was involved in the attack, though police were still investigating.
Gun violence is relatively rare in Denmark.
Thomassen said it was too early to speculate on the motive for the shooting, which happened in the late afternoon at Field’s, one of the biggest shopping malls in Scandinavia and located on the outskirts of the Danish capital. When the shots rang out, some people hid in shops while others fled in a panicked stampede, according to witnesses.
“It is pure terror. This is awful,” said Hans Christian Stoltz, a 53-year-old IT consultant, who was bringing his daughters to see Harry Styles perform at concert scheduled for Sunday night near the mall. “You might wonder how a person can do this to another human being, but it’s beyond … beyond anything that’s possible.”
Thomassen said the victims included a man in his 40s and two “young people,” without giving details. Several others were injured, three of them critically, he said.
He said police received the first reports of a shooting at 5.37 p.m., and arrested the suspect 11 minutes later. Thomassen described the suspect as an “ethnic Dane,” a phrase typically used to mean someone is white.
Danish broadcaster TV2 published a grainy photo of the alleged gunman, a man wearing knee-length shorts, a vest or sleeveless shirt, and holding what appeared to be a rifle in his right hand. “He seemed very violent and angry,” eyewitness Mahdi Al-Wazni told TV2. “He spoke to me and said it (the rifle) isn’t real as I was filming him. He seemed very proud of what he was doing.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the Scandinavian country had been hit by a “cruel attack.”
“It is incomprehensible. Heartbreaking. Pointless,” she said. “Our beautiful and usually so safe capital was changed in a split second.”
Also read: Russian missile strike hits crowded shopping mall in Ukraine
Images from the scene showed people running out of the mall, and TV2 posted a photo of a man being put on a stretcher. After the shooting, an enormous contingent of heavily armed police officers patrolled the area, with several fire department vehicles also parked outside the mall.
Laurits Hermansen told Danish broadcaster DR that he was in a clothing store at the shopping center with his family when he heard “three, four bangs. Really loud bangs. It sounded like the shots were being fired just next to the store.”
The shopping center is on the outskirts of Copenhagen just across from a subway station for a line that connects the city center with the international airport. A major highway also runs adjacent to the mall.
Organizers called off the Harry Styles concert, which had been scheduled at the nearby Royal Arena, by order of police.
On Snapchat, Styles wrote: “My team and I pray for everyone involved in the Copenhagen shopping mall shooting. I am shocked. Love H.”
The royal palace said a reception with Crown Prince Frederik connected to the Tour de France cycling race had been canceled. The first three stages of the race were held in Denmark this year. The reception was due to be held on the royal yacht that is moored in Soenderborg, the town where the third stage ended.
In a joint statement, Queen Margrethe, her son Crown Prince Frederik and his wife, Crown Princess Mary, said: “We do not yet know the full extent of the tragedy, but it is already clear that more people have lost their lives and that even more have been injured.”
“The situation calls for unity and care,” they said in a statement.
The shooting came a week after a mass shooting in neighboring Norway, where police said a Norwegian man of Iranian origin opened fire during a LGBTQ festival, killing two and wounding more than 20.
It was the worst gun attack in Denmark since February 2015, when a 22-year-old man was killed in a shootout with police after going on a shooting spree in the capital that left two people dead and five police officers wounded.
Russia's defense minister reports capture of Ukraine city
Russia's defense minister says Moscow's forces have taken control of the last major Ukrainian-held city in Ukraine's Luhansk province.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin on Sunday that “as a result of successful military operations, the armed forces of the Russian Federation, together with units of the People’s Militia of the Luhansk People’s Republic, have established full control over the city of Lysychansk,” Russian news agencies reported.
Ukrainian fighters spent weeks trying to defend Lysychansk and to keep it from falling to Russia, as neighboring Sievierodonetsk did a week ago. A presidential adviser predicted late Saturday that the city's could be determined within days.
Read:Russian missiles kill at least 19 in Ukraine’s Odesa region
Russian forces were strengthening their positions in a grueling fight to capture the last stronghold of resistance in eastern Ukraine's Luhansk province, the region's governor said Sunday.
Ukrainian fighters have spent weeks trying to defend the city of Lysychansk, and to keep it from falling to Russia, as neighboring Sievierodonetsk did a week ago. A presidential adviser predicted its fate could be determined within days.
“The occupiers threw all their forces on Lysychansk. They attacked the city with incomprehensibly cruel tactics,” Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said on the Telegram messaging app. “They suffer significant losses, but stubbornly advance. They are gaining a foothold in the city.”
A river separates Lysychansk from Sievierodonetsk. Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, said during an online interview late Saturday that Russian forces had managed for the first time to cross the river from the north, creating a “threatening” situation.
Arestovych said they had not reached the center of the city but that the course of the fighting indicated the battle for Lysychansk would be decided by Monday. In May, Ukrainian and British officials reported that Russia lost nearly an entire battalion in an attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets River and set up a bridgehead.
Taking Lysychansk would bring Moscow closer to its stated goal of seizing all of Ukraine's Donbas region. Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk are the two provinces that make up the Donbas, where Russia has focused its offensive since pulling back from northern Ukraine and the capital, Kyiv, in the spring.
Pro-Russia separatists have held portions of both eastern provinces since 2014, and Moscow recognizes all of Luhansk and Donetsk as sovereign republics. Syria’s government said Wednesday that it would also recognize the “independence and sovereignty” of the two areas.
If Russian forces take Lysychansk, it would open the way for them to move west into province, where the sizable Ukrainian-held city of Slovyansk has come under rocket attacks several times since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
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Elsewhere in the war, the exiled mayor of the Russia-occupied city of Melitopol said Sunday that Ukrainian rockets destroyed one of four Russian military bases in the city.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine also launched missile and drone attacks in western Russia, on the cities of Kursk and Belgorod, but that the aerial weapons were shot down. Kursk regional governor Roman Starovoit said the town of Tetkino, on the Ukraine border, came under mortar fire.
The leader of neighboring Belarus, a Russian ally, claimed Saturday that Ukraine fired missiles at military targets on Belarusian territory several days ago but all were intercepted by an air defense system. President Alexander Lukashenko described the alleged strike as a provocation and noted that no Belarusian soldiers were fighting in Ukraine.
There was no immediate response from the Ukrainian military.
Belarus hosts Russian military units and was used as a staging ground for Russia’s invasion. Last week, just hours before Lukashenko was to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian long-range bombers fired missiles on Ukraine from Belarusian airspace for the first time.
Lukashenko has so far resisted efforts to draw his army into the war. But during their meeting, Putin announced that Russia planned to supply Belarus with the Iskander-M missile system and reminded Lukashenko that his government depends on economic support from Russia.
Bus falls into deep ravine in southwest Pakistan, killing 19
A passenger bus slid off a mountain road and fell into a deep ravine in heavy rain in southwest Pakistan on Sunday, killing 19 people and injuring 12 others, a government official said.
Mahtab Shah, assistant administrator for the district of Shirani in Baluchistan province, said about 35 passengers were traveling in the bus. He said rescue workers were searching for survivors in the wreckage of the destroyed vehicle and surroundings.
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Shah said apparently the bus slid on the wet road amid heavy rain and the driver lost control of the vehicle, which fell about 200 feet (61 meters) into the ravine.
Deadly road accidents are common in Pakistan due to poor road infrastructure and disregard for traffic laws, as well as poorly maintained vehicles. Last month, 22 people were killed in a similar accident when a bus fell into a ravine in Qila Saifullah district.
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