WASHINGTON: The FBI on Saturday ruled out Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud's claim that he was responsible for an attack on a US immigration assistance center in New York state in which 14 people were killed.
‘Based on the evidence, we can firmly discount that claim,’ FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said.
Militant leader Mehsud had earlier called Reuters and claimed the attack: ‘I accept responsibility. They were my men. I gave them orders in reaction to US drone attacks,’ he said from an undisclosed location.
A man armed with two handguns killed 14 people at an immigration services centre before apparently turning the gun on himself, authorities in Binghamton, New York, said.
Representative Maurice Hinchey, whose district includes Binghamton, told the New York Times that indications are the gunman was an immigrant from Vietnam.
In New York City, Gov. David Paterson said at a news conference that 12 or 13 people had been killed in the city center. The suspected gunman carried identification with the name of 42-year-old Jiverly Voong of nearby Johnson City, New York, a law enforcement official said.
The suspect's body was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in an office of the American Civic Association building, said the official, requesting anonymity.
The gunman barricaded the rear door of the building with his car before entering through the front door, firing his weapon, the official said.
The gunman had recently been let go from IBM in Johnson City, said Rep. Maurice Hinchey, whose district includes Binghamton. The gunman opened fire on a citizenship class, he said.
‘People were there in the process of being tested for their citizenship,’ Hinchey said in a telephone interview. ‘It was in the middle of a test. He just went in and opened fire.’
A woman who answered the phone at a listing for Henry D. Voong said she was Jiverly Voong's sister but would not give her name.
Asked if she was aware that he might have been involved in the shooting, she said: ‘How? He didn't have a gun. I think somebody involved, not him. I think he got shot by somebody else.’
‘I think there's a misunderstanding over here because I want to know, too,’ she said.
The American Civic Association helps immigrants in the Binghamton area with naturalization applications, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The association describes itself as helping immigrants and refugees with counseling, resettlement, citizenship, family reunification and translators.
The association's president, Angela Leach, ‘is very upset right now,’ said Mike Chanecka, a friend who answered a call at her home as Leach wept in the background.
‘She doesn't know anything; she's as shocked as anyone,’ Chanecka said. ‘For some reason, she had the day off today. And she's very worried about her secretary.’
Two women and a man suffering gunshot wounds were being treated at Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City, said hospital spokeswoman Christina Boyd. One was stable, one was serious and one was critical. Their ages ranged from 20s to 50s, she said.
Linda Miller, a spokeswoman at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton, said a student from Binghamton University was being treated there.
The shooting occurred in a mixed neighborhood of homes and small businesses in the center of Binghamton, a city of about 47,000 located 140 miles northwest of New York City.
College student Leslie Shrager told the AP that she and her five housemates were sleeping when police pounded on the front door of their house next door to the shooting scene.
Officers escorted the six Binghamton University students outside, she said, and that's when they learned of the shooting. ‘One of our housemates thought they heard banging of some kind. But when you're living in downtown Binghamton, it's always noisy,’ said Shrager, of Slingerlands, an Albany suburb. ‘Literally two minutes later the cops came and got us out.’
At the junction of the Susquehanna and the Chenango rivers, the Binghamton area was the home to Endicott-Johnson shoe company and the birthplace of IBM, which between them employed tens of thousands of workers before the shoe company closed a decade ago and IBM downsized in recent years.
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