Passengers were ordered out of public areas of the domestic
terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the United
States' busiest by passenger volume, but the site was quickly
cleared and operations resumed, airport officials said.
Parts of Denver airport were also evacuated on Tuesday, hours after
at least 31 people were killed and 271 wounded in attacks on
Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train, as airports across the
United States tightened security.
U.S. officials were trying to find Americans missing after the
attacks, which the officials said injured about a dozen U.S.
citizens including three Mormon missionaries, a U.S. Air Force
airman, and four members of his family.
Among those missing were U.S. government personnel, a State
Department spokesman told reporters in Washington.
"We still have not accounted for every official U.S. government
employee or their family members on the ground," said the spokesman,
Mark Toner. "Partly that reflects the size of the mission or three
missions: there's a bilateral mission, there's a mission to the EU,
as well as a mission to NATO." The situation, Toner added, remains "very fluid." He could not
confirm whether any Americans were killed.
Representative Devin Nunes of California, chairman of the U.S. House
intelligence committee, said the attacks may have been aimed at U.S.
citizens, noting that the airport blast struck close to U.S. airline
counters and that the metro station hit was near the U.S. embassy.
"It looks like it was targeted toward Americans to some degree,"
Nunes told reporters.
Apart from the eight Americans confirmed as wounded, U.S. media
reported on Wednesday that relatives of at least four other
Americans who had been traveling in Belgium were still trying to
track them down.
Husband and wife Justin and Stephanie Shults, originally from
Tennessee and Kentucky, respectively, but now living in Belgium,
have not been heard from since they dropped a relative at the
airport shortly before the blasts, a family member said.
"We haven't been able to contact them going on 30 hours," Justin
Shults' brother, Levi Sutton, told Reuters in a Facebook message.
"Stephanie's mom is fine but she was separated from Justin and
Stephanie."
DEATH TOLL COULD RISE
Sister and brother Sascha and Alexander Pinczowski, who had been
living in New York, remain unaccounted for, the New York Daily News
reported. The Pinczowskis' citizenship was unclear. A woman who
identified herself on social media as Alexander Pinczowski's
girlfriend said she had been unable to contact him since Tuesday
morning.
[to top of second column] |
Belgian officials have said the death toll could increase because
some victims at the subway station were blown to pieces and hard to
identify, and several survivors were in critical condition.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said on Wednesday
that one of its missionaries, Richard Norby, 66, was in a
medically-induced coma after lengthy surgery to address shrapnel
wounds and second-degree burns.
The attacks sent shockwaves across Europe and around the world, with
authorities racing to review security at airports and on public
transport systems.
Islamic State, which controls areas of Syria and Iraq and has
sympathizers worldwide, claimed responsibility for the Brussels
bombings, fueling debate and controversy in the United States about
how to stop such attacks.
U.S. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said the
United States and Europe should take a "harder look" at protocols at
airports and other "soft sites" outside security perimeters.
U.S. Republican presidential campaign hopeful Donald Trump has
advocated torturing militant suspects to obtain information, while
another Republican candidate, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, called
for heightened police scrutiny of neighborhoods with large Muslim
populations.
President Barack Obama, a Democrat, rejected singling out Muslims
and said while on a visit to Argentina that any such approach "is
not only wrong and un-American, but it also would be
counterproductive because it would reduce the strength, the
antibodies that we have to resist the terrorism."
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden said the United States was
offering Belgium all assistance to help bring the bombers to
justice. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Belgium on
Friday, a State Department spokesman said.
(Additional reporting by Megan Cassella, Amanda Becker and Susan
Heavey in Washington, Barbara Goldberg in New York, Suzannah
Gonzales in Chicago, Jeff Mason in Buenos Aires; Writing by Scott
Malone and Daniel Wallis; Editing by Bill Trott and Grant McCool)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
|