Ïîïóëÿðíûå ñîîáùåíèÿ

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Police continued searching Monday for two men who exchanged gunfire on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, leaving nine people shot in the crossfire, including two who were in critical condition.

Images captured from a surveillance camera above a bar showed people running down the street in the chaos of the shooting at 2:45 a.m. Sunday.

Police placed several views for the shootout online asking for the public's help in identifying the two shooters.

New Orleans Police Chief Ronal Serpas said six victims were hospitalized in stable condition. The other victim's condition was not available. Some of them were tourists. Their names were not immediately released.

Serpas said at a news conference in the French Quarter that the victims were shot "by two cowardly young men trying to hurt each other."

"What happened was two young men got angry at each other and shot at each other," he said.

Bourbon Street is a nightly swirl of bright neon and tourists, usually with beverages in hand. A blend of jazz joints, strip clubs, bars and restaurants, Bourbon Street has everything from four-star dining to sex shows.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu pledged a swift response from law enforcement.

"Our No. 1 priority is to keep New Orleans safe," Landrieu said in a statement. "These kinds of incidents will not go unanswered ... I am confident that between video evidence and eyewitness accounts, we will bring the perpetrators to justice."

Police have not determined whether the shootings might be gang-related, Serpas said. He called on residents, businesses and witnesses who may have video footage, including any from surveillance cameras, to contact police.

It was the third major shooting on Bourbon Street in the last three years.

On the Saturday before Mardi Gras, four people were treated at a hospital after a shooting. During Halloween in 2011, one person was killed and seven others were injured after gunmen opened fire on each other.

BEIRUT (AP) — Heavy clashes were underway Monday between several Syrian rebel factions and an al-Qaida breakaway group fighting for control of a border crossing with Iraq, opposition activists said, just hours after the jihadi group declared the establishment of a transnational Islamic caliphate.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said fighting between rebel groups and rivals in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is concentrated in the town of Boukamal on the border between Syria and Iraq.

The jihadist group, which on Sunday declared the establishment of an Islamic caliphate, controls much of northeastern Syria. In Iraq, it has recently captured cities and towns as well as border crossings, effectively erasing the frontier.

The group says its Islamic state stretches from northern Syria to the Iraqi province of Diyala northeast of Baghdad, and has called on all Muslims worldwide to pledge allegiance to it.

Last week, beleaguered fighters of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, which has previously fought the Islamic State in opposition-held territory in northern and eastern Syria, defected and joined the Islamic State in Boukamal, effectively handing over the border town to the powerful group, which controls the Iraqi side of the crossing.

Rebel infighting has turned into a war within a war in Syria, three years after the conflict began with largely peaceful protests against President Bashar Assad, whose family has ruled the country for more than four decades.

After the government brutally cracked down on the protest movement, many Syrians took up arms to fight back. As the uprising shifted into a civil war, the Western-backed Free Syrian Army emerged, a loose term for a collection of self-formed brigades and defectors from Assad's military that fight under a nationalist banner.

But Islamic fighters became the dominant force in the armed opposition, ranging from religious-minded Syrians calling for rule by Shariah law to more extreme al-Qaida-inspired fighters.

The Islamic State, which was at the time Iraq's al-Qaida branch, barged into the Syrian war in 2012, sending in its battle-hardened forces and recruiting foreign jihadis.

Other rebels initially welcomed the jihadis as allies against the Assad government, but soon turned on the group, accusing it of hijacking the uprising for its own transnational goals and imposing a brutal form of Islamic rule in the territories under its control.

Up to 7,000 people, the majority of them fighters, have been killed in the rebel-on-rebel violence across the opposition-held territory in the north since January, according to the Observatory's tally, which is compiled by its activists on the ground.

MOSCOW (AP) — A veteran cameraman working for Russia's Channel One was killed in eastern Ukraine when a bus carrying journalists and soldiers' mothers was hit by gunfire, the station said Monday.

Anatoly Klyan, 68, who had worked for the state channel for 40 years, was the fifth journalist to be killed since the fighting began in April between Ukrainian government troops and armed pro-Russia separatists.

Channel One said its crew was traveling late Sunday to a Ukrainian military base with mothers of conscripts hoping to bring their sons home when their bus came under attack near Avdiivka, a village just north of the city of Donetsk.

Russia's Foreign Ministry blamed the attack on Ukrainian soldiers and demanded an objective investigation into the attack and for those responsible to be punished.

Video footage of the attack broadcast on Channel One showed Klyan continuing to film inside the bus even after he was shot in the stomach, stopping only when he grew weak and telling his colleagues "I can't hold the camera any longer." Other journalists helped him into a passing car to be taken to a nearby medical center, but the television station said doctors were unable to save him.

The bus driver also was hit in the head. He was filmed holding his left hand to his bloody, shaven head while continuing to drive with his right hand until it was safe to stop.

Channel One said the trip was organized by the rebel fighters and that the bus, whose driver was wearing camouflage, came under fire as it approached the military base.

Ukrainian conscripts serving in eastern Ukraine tend to be from the region, where the majority of the population is Russian-speaking. Many conscripts may have little loyalty to the Kiev government or openly support the separatists.

Whatever the case, the mothers headed to the based Sunday night wanted to protect their teenage sons from a military conflict that has already killed more than 400 people.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the attack showed that Ukraine's armed forces were not interested in a de-escalation of the military conflict and was further evidence that they were violating the cease-fire.

Four other journalists have been killed in eastern Ukraine. A correspondent and cameraman working for Rossiya, the other Russian state network, were killed June 18 after being hit by mortar fire near the city of Luhansk. On May 24, an Italian photographer and his Russian colleague were caught in a mortar attack near Slovyansk.

Both sides have been accused of violating the 10-day cease-fire, which was set to expire at 10 p.m. Monday local time (1900GMT).

Monday also was the deadline that the European Union set for Russia and the separatists to take specific steps to ease the violence. Otherwise, EU leaders warned that they were ready to impose further sanctions.

Blog Archive