Swiss Police Identify Stabbing Suspect as Militant

Police seen in central Zurich, Switzerland. Reuters file photo
Police seen in central Zurich, Switzerland. Reuters file photo
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Swiss Police Identify Stabbing Suspect as Militant

Police seen in central Zurich, Switzerland. Reuters file photo
Police seen in central Zurich, Switzerland. Reuters file photo

Police have identified a Swiss woman who knifed a victim in the neck and grabbed another by the throat in a Lugano department store in the south of Switzerland on Tuesday as a known militant.

Federal prosecutors have called the incident in the Italian-speaking southern canton of Ticino a suspected terrorist attack and taken charge of the investigation.

The assailant is known to Fedpol from police investigations in 2017 with a militant background, the Federal Office of Police tweeted.

The suspect, a 28-year-old who lives in the area, was in custody after passersby subdued her until police could arrive.

Swiss media cited witnesses as saying she called out that she belonged to ISIS during the attack.

One victim sustained serious but not life-threatening injuries and another was lightly injured.

Switzerland has identified hundreds of residents deemed a threat and militants who have travelled to war zones.

Two men arrested in the town of Winterthur near Zurich this month over possible links to an extremist shooting attack in Vienna that killed four people on Nov. 2 visited the attacker in July.

In September, a man Swiss media dubbed the "Emir of Winterthur" and described as a leading militant in Switzerland was sentenced to 50 months in prison for ties to ISIS.

Federal prosecutors have said that a fatal stabbing of a Portuguese man in September in the town of Morges, in western Switzerland, was still being investigated for a possible "terrorist motive". A Swiss-Turkish national has been arrested.



DHL Cargo Plane Crashes into a House in Lithuania, Killing at Least 1

A Lithuanian rescuer walks past the wreckage of a cargo plane following its crash near the Vilnius International Airport in Vilnius on November 25, 2024. (Photo by Petras MALUKAS / AFP)
A Lithuanian rescuer walks past the wreckage of a cargo plane following its crash near the Vilnius International Airport in Vilnius on November 25, 2024. (Photo by Petras MALUKAS / AFP)
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DHL Cargo Plane Crashes into a House in Lithuania, Killing at Least 1

A Lithuanian rescuer walks past the wreckage of a cargo plane following its crash near the Vilnius International Airport in Vilnius on November 25, 2024. (Photo by Petras MALUKAS / AFP)
A Lithuanian rescuer walks past the wreckage of a cargo plane following its crash near the Vilnius International Airport in Vilnius on November 25, 2024. (Photo by Petras MALUKAS / AFP)

A DHL cargo plane crashed into a house Monday morning near Lithuania's capital, killing at least one person.
The head of the country's police said the plane crashed shortly before landing at Vilnius airport.
“It fell a few kilometers before the airport, it just skidded for a few hundred meters, its debris somewhat caught a residential house," said Police Commissioner-General Renatas Požėla. "Residential infrastructure around the house was on fire, and the house was slightly damaged, but we managed to evacuate people.”
Lithuanian’s public broadcaster LRT, quoting an emergency official, said two people had been taken to the hospital after the crash, and one was later pronounced dead.
The Lithuanian airport authority identified the aircraft as a DHL cargo plane arriving from Leipzig, Germany. It posted on the social platform X that city services including a fire truck were on site.
Flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24, analyzed by The Associated Press, showed the aircraft made a turn to the north of the airport, lining up for landing, before crashing a little more than 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) short of the runway.
Authorities did not immediately offer a cause for the crash, which happened just before 5:30 a.m local time. Weather at the airport was around freezing temperature, with clouds before sunrise and winds around 30 kph (18 mph).
DHL Group, headquartered in Bonn, Germany, did not immediately return a call for comment.
The DHL aircraft was operated by Swiftair, a Madrid-based contractor. The carrier could not be immediately reached.
The Boeing 737 was 31 years old, which is considered by experts to be an older airframe, though that’s not unusual for cargo flights.