Two U.S. airmen killed in Germany

FRANKFURT, Germany – Two U.S. airmen were killed and two others were wounded at Frankfurt airport Wednesday when a man opened fire on them at close range with a handgun, the first such attack on American forces in Germany in a quarter century.

President Barack Obama called the shooting an “outrageous act.”

The alleged assailant, identified as a 21-year-old Kosovo man, was taken immediately into custody and was being questioned by authorities.

Family members in Kosovo described the suspect as a devout Muslim, who was born and raised in Germany and worked at the airport.

The attacker got into an argument with airmen outside their military bus before opening fire, killing the bus driver and one other serviceman, and wounding two others, one of whom was in life-threatening condition, police said. He said the attacker also briefly entered the bus.

The suspect then fled into the airport terminal, where he was quickly grabbed by two federal police officers and a U.S. airman who had pursued him into the building, authorities said. He was disarmed without incident.

The victims, part of a group of about a dozen members of an Air Force military police and base security unit, had just arrived from England, the Air Force said.

They had landed at Frankfurt airport, one of Europe’s busiest, and were waiting outside Terminal 2 to be driven to nearby Ramstein Air Base, which is often used as a logistical hub for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The two wounded airmen were taken to a hospital.

The dead and wounded U.S. airmen were not identified pending notification of their families. A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Todd Vician, said the airmen were on their way to an overseas deployment to Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere.

Boris Rhein, the top security official in the German state of Hesse, told German media there were no indications of a terrorist attack.

Kosovo Interior Minister Bajram Rexhepi identified the suspect as Arif Uka, a Kosovo citizen from the northern town of Mitrovica.

In Mitrovica, family members identified him as Arid Uka, saying that he was born and educated in Germany where his family moved some 40 years ago. However, German police said he was born in Kosovo.

An uncle, Rexhep Uka, said the suspect’s grandfather was a religious leader at a mosque in a village near Mitrovica.

A cousin, Behxhet Uka, said he spoke to the suspect’s father, Murat Uka, several times by telephone from Frankfurt after the family was contacted by Kosovo police. The father said all he knew was that his son did not come home from his job at the airport on Wednesday.

Behxhet Uka said he would be shocked if Arid Uka was behind the shooting, saying that like the vast majority of Kosovo Albanians, the family is pro-American.