CAIRO: Without providing any evidence to support the claim, the Daesh group on Monday said the gunman in the mass shooting in Las Vegas was “a soldier” from its ranks who had converted to Islam months ago.
Authorities have yet to identify a motive for the shooting, and said initially there was no evidence of any connection to international terrorism.
The group’s Aamaq news agency released two brief statements hours after the shooting at a country music concert that killed at least 58 people and wounded more than 500. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.
But the FBI dismissed the Daesh claim. Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse said the bureau had found no connection between the shooter and the Daesh group.
Police have identified the shooter as Stephen Craig Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nevada, and have said he killed himself after the shooting. Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said authorities believe it was a “lone wolf” attack, and the US Homeland Security Department said there was no “specific credible threat” involving other public venues in the US.
The Daesh (Arabic acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) group often claims attacks by individuals inspired by its message but with no known links to the group. However, it is not known to have claimed any attacks that were not at least loosely linked to it.
No criminal history
Police say Paddock was a retiree with no criminal history in the Nevada county where he lived.
The brother of 64-year-old Stephen Paddock said he’s “completely dumbfounded” by the shooting at a country music concert Sunday night, which is the deadliest in modern US history.
Eric Paddock told the Orlando Sentinel newspaper that he can’t understand what happened.
Mesquite Police Chief Troy Tanner says Stephen Paddock owned a single-family home in Sun City Mesquite, a retirement community along the Nevada-Arizona border.
He lived there with Marilou Danley, 62. Police say they don’t believe she was involved.
Heavily armed police searched the home early Monday.
Texas authorities say he lived in a Dallas suburb from 2009 to 2012.
Other Daesh claims
The extremist group has a history of exaggerated or false claims, including earlier this year, when it claimed an attack on a casino in the Philippines that turned out to have been a botched robbery carried out by a heavily indebted gambling addict.
Before Sunday, the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history took place in June 2016, when a gunman opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people. The gunman, Omar Mateen, had pledged allegiance to Daesh and it claimed the attack.
Daesh claimed responsibility for an attack on a casino in the Philippines that killed dozens of people earlier this year, but police later identified the attacker as a heavily indebted Filipino gambling addict, saying it was a botched robbery that was not terrorism-related.
The extremist organization has suffered a string of major setbacks in Iraq and Syria, where it has lost much of the territory it once claimed as part of a self-styled Islamic caliphate. However, the group remains active in recruiting followers on social media, and has repeatedly called on its supporters to carry out attacks in Western nations.
Daesh claims Las Vegas mass shooting, probers say no proof of terror angle
Daesh claims Las Vegas mass shooting, probers say no proof of terror angle
Germany’s Merz vows to keep out far-right as he warns of a changed world
- “We will not allow these people from the so-called Alternative for Germany to ruin our country,” Merz told party delegates
- He avoided critising his coalition partners in the center-left Social Democrats
STUTTGART, Germany: Chancellor Friedrich Merz vowed on Friday not to let the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “ruin” Germany and told his fellow conservatives to prepare for a raw new climate of great-power competition.
Merz’s message to the Christian Democrat (CDU) party’s conference in Stuttgart reiterated points he made at last weekend’s Munich Security Conference, saying the “rules based order we knew no longer exists.” He also made calls for economic reform, and a rejection of antisemitism and the AfD, which is aiming to win its first state election this year.
“We will not allow these people from the so-called Alternative for Germany to ruin our country,” he told party delegates, who welcomed former chancellor Angela Merkel with a storm of applause on her first visit to the conference since stepping down in 2021.
Merz, trailing badly in the polls ahead of a string of state elections this year, said he accepted criticism that the reforms he announced during last year’s election campaign had been slower than initially communicated.
“I will freely admit that perhaps, after the change of government, we did not make it clear quickly enough that we would not be able to achieve this enormous reform effort overnight,” he said.
He avoided critising his coalition partners in the center-left Social Democrats and promised to push ahead with efforts to cut bureaucracy, bring down energy costs and foster investment, saying that economic prosperity was vital to Germany’s security.
He also pledged further reforms of the welfare state and said new proposals for a reform of the pension system would be presented, following a revolt by younger members of his own party in a bruising parliamentary battle last year.
Merz’s speech was greeted with around 10 minutes of applause as delegates put on a show of unity and he was re-elected as party chairman with 91 percent of the vote, avoiding any potentially embarrassing display of internal dissatisfaction.
Among other business, the party conference is due to discuss a motion to block access to social media platforms for children under the age of 16. However any legislation would take time because under the German system, state governments have the main responsibility for regulating media.
The elections begin next month with the western states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate before a further round later in the year, one of them in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD hopes to win its first state ballot.
