FBI rules out terrorism in Seattle plane crash
Washington, Aug 12 : The airline employee who stole a plane on Friday in Seattle and crashed soon afterward did not have any links to terrorist organizations and was seeking to commit suicide, the FBI said on Saturday.
The FBI said via Twitter that "the information gathered thus far does NOT suggest a terrorist threat".
The Pierce County Sheriff's Department previously said that preliminary investigations suggested that the 29-year-old man who stole the plane was suicidal and had crashed because he was "doing stunts in air" or because of a "lack of flying skills", Efe reported.
The man, who worked for an airline at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, stole an empty 76-seat plane Friday night belonging to Horizon Air, a subsidiary of Alaska Airlines, and took off without authorization.
Soon afterward, the North American Aerospace Defense Command launched two F-15 fighter jets to pursue the stolen plane, which crashed on Ketron Island, between Tacoma and Olympia, after performing air stunts.
According to White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, US president Donald Trump had been informed on the incident and was monitoring the situation from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
"Federal authorities are assisting with the ongoing investigation which is being led by local authorities. We commend the interagency response effort for their swift action and protection of public safety," Sanders said in a statement.
While the incident was taking place, no plane was allowed to take off from Seattle-Tacoma, which is ranked the ninth busiest airport in the United States, serving 46.9 million passengers in 2017.
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MP boat tragedy: Death toll climbs to 13; body of last missing person recovered
Jabalpur (PTI): The bodies of a five-year-old boy and his uncle were recovered from Bargi Dam in Madhya Pradesh's Jabalpur district on Sunday morning, raising the death toll in the cruise boat tragedy to 13, police said.
The boat, around 20 years old and operated by the state tourism department, capsized during a storm on Thursday evening.
"The bodies of Mayuram (5) and his uncle Kamraj (around 50), an employee of the Ordnance Factory in Khamaria, were found floating and were fished out of the dam," Bargi Sub Divisional Officer of Police Anjul Ayank Mishra told PTI over the phone.
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All 13 missing persons identified have now been accounted for, he said, adding the bodies were sent to a government hospital for postmortem.
Teams comprising around 20 Army divers airlifted from Agra, along with personnel from the National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force and local divers, were involved in the search operation, the police said.
Of the 41 identified passengers on board the vessel, 28 were rescued after the incident, according to the police.
The CCTV footage near the boarding point showed 43 people heading towards the boat, though the identities of 41 passengers have been confirmed so far, they said.
The state government on Friday ordered a probe into the incident and dismissed three crew members. It also banned the operation of similar vessels in the state.
