The Wall Street Journal By DAVID CRAWFORD, JULIAN E. BARNES and LAURA STEVENS FRANKFURT―A lone gunman killed two American servicemen and wounded at least two others on a U.S. military bus outside Frankfurt Airport in what officials described as a possible terrorist attack. The shooting was the first deadly assault on U.S. military personnel in Europe in years. Police investigated the scene after a gunman fired shots at U.S. soldiers on the bus outside Frankfurt airport, Germany, Wednesday. German police, aided by an American serviceman not injured in the assault, apprehended a suspect at the scene whom authorities described as a 21-year-old Kosovo native of Albanian descent. The suspect's name wasn't disclosed. A U.S. official said early indications suggested that the shooting was a terrorist assault and not a random act of violence. German police said they had no evidence of a terrorist motive but couldn't rule one out. A senior military official in Washington said the suspect has "some kind of Islamic ties, but we do not know exactly what those are or how deep they are." The official said it was too early to tell if the suspect was aligned with Al Qaeda or localized Islamic organizations in Kosovo, a former Yugoslav territory that is majority Muslim. The U.S. military has long had concerns about anti-American, anti-NATO groups in Kosovo, where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has a peacekeeping mission, a senior U.S. military official said. The anti-American militants in Kosovo are small in number. "We don't think they are particularly well-organized, but they are present," the official said. President Barack Obama said the U.S. was still gathering information about the attack. "We will spare no effort in learning how this outrageous act took place and working with German authorities to ensure that all of the perpetrators are brought to justice," he told reporters at the White House. The suspected gunman opened fire outside Frankfurt airport's vast Terminal 2 building shortly before 3:30 p.m. local time, according to the police. The suspect, a Frankfurt resident, was involved in a scuffle that began outside the bus and continued on board the bus, where most of the shooting injuries occurred, according to a police spokesman. It wasn't clear who was in the altercation with the suspect. The men who were killed and wounded had just flown to Frankfurt from the U.K. and were to be taken by bus to the U.S.'s Ramstein Air Force base nearby, another German police spokesman said. Around 10 to 15 U.S. personnel were on the bus, authorities said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking in Berlin, promised a thorough investigation. "I want to convey my deep dismay and assure the families and relatives of these American soldiers that we're doing everything possible to clarify what happened in this awful incident," Ms. Merkel said. The attack follows a series of recent warnings in Germany and elsewhere in Europe of pending terrorist plots, but officials have said those plots were developed in Pakistan's tribal regions. Germany, where several of the September 11 plotters lived before the attacks on the World Trade Center, has a sizable Muslim population and authorities here have taken a hard line in recent years against suspected militants. In 2007 German police arrested members of a Muslim extremist group in western Germany who planned bomb attacks against U.S. military installations in the country. In two trials that concluded in 2010, German courts convicted five alleged supporters on charges of supporting terrorism. Germany, where the U.S. has maintained a significant military presence since the end of World War II, has been the scene of a number of deadly attacks on U.S. service members over the years. In 1986, suspected Libyan-sponsored terrorists detonated a bomb in a Berlin disco killing three people, including two U.S. servicemen. In 1985, leftist terrorists killed three people in an attack at the U.S. Rhein-Main Airbase. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559604576176351640603670.html
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