Egypt vows to try those who targeted Israel mission (Reuters)

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt vowed on Saturday to try those behind the violence that drove Israel to evacuate its ambassador from Cairo, heaping pressure on army rulers to respond to public fury against the Jewish state while fending off U.S. criticism.

Washington, which has poured billions of dollars of military aid into Egypt since it made peace with Israel in 1979, urged Cairo to protect the mission after protesters hurled embassy documents and the Israeli flag from the windows of the building.

Three people were killed and 1,049 wounded in the clashes that began on Friday and raged on into the early hours of Saturday around the Cairo tower block housing the embassy, the Health Ministry said. Police and soldiers had fired shots in the air and teargas to disperse the crowd, who hurled stones at them.

Egypt's army, under pressure to give power to civilians after taking over from toppled ex-president Hosni Mubarak, must balance public calls for a more assertive policy toward Israel with maintaining ties that bring it cash and top-notch U.S. hardware.

"Egypt witnessed a harsh day that inflicted pain and worry on all Egyptians. It is clear that the behavior of some threatens the Egyptian revolution," Information Minister Osama Hassan Heikal said in a televised statement.

Egypt would transfer those in custody or "involved in inciting or participating in (Friday's) events to the emergency state security court," the minister said, adding that Cairo would use emergency laws still in place to protect the nation.

Protesters lit tyres in the street and at least two vehicles were set alight near the embassy. Many had come from a demonstration earlier on Friday in central Cairo calling for the army to end emergency law and speed up other reforms.

"Our dignity has been restored," said Mohi Alaa, 24, a protester near the site of the overnight clashes. Bits of concrete and bullet casings were strewn over the street.

"We don't want the Americans' money," he said, showing the greater readiness of many Egyptians to express resentment of Israel and the United States and anger at Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, after decades of pragmatic official relations.

Some 500 protesters stayed after dawn and a few threw stones at police, who gradually pushed them away and secured the area around the embassy, located on the upper floors of a residential block overlooking the Nile.

AMBASSADOR EVACUATED

It was the second big eruption of violence at the embassy since five Egyptian border guards were killed last month when Israel repelled cross-border raiders it said were Palestinians. Egypt then briefly threatened to withdraw its envoy to Israel.

Israel has stopped short of apologizing, saying it is still investigating the Egyptian deaths, which occurred during an operation against gunmen who had killed eight Israelis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will make a statement at 1730 GMT (1:30 p.m. EDT) on Saturday about the Cairo violence, his office said.

Israeli ambassador Yitzhak Levanon, staff and family members arrived home on Saturday, but one diplomat stayed in Egypt to maintain the embassy, an Israeli official said.

The information minister's statement followed a crisis meeting between Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and other ministers as well as talks with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who heads the military council that has ruled Egypt since Mubarak resigned on February 11.

State television said the military council rejected Sharaf's offer to resign.

Israel is finding itself increasingly at odds with formerly sympathetic states in the region. It is already embroiled in a feud with Turkey, once the closest of its few Muslim allies, over its treatment of the Palestinians.

Egypt's ties with Israel, though never warm, were a pillar of Mubarak's foreign policy and buttressed his claim to be a regional mediator. Mubarak regularly met Israeli officials.

Under Mubarak, Egyptians could never show such hostility to Israel without a crushing security response. That has changed. Police came down hard but could not contain the anger.

U.S. DEMANDS

President Barack Obama called on Egypt to "honor its international obligations" and protect the Israeli mission. He told Israel's Netanyahu that Washington was taking steps to resolve the situation.

Egypt is committed to "fully respect all its international obligations regarding protecting and safeguarding international diplomatic missions on its soil," the state MENA news agency quoted Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr as saying.

An Israeli official said the ambassador, staff and family members had left in one plane and a second one had brought home six Israeli security personnel who had been left guarding the embassy, protected from the crowd only by a reinforced door until Egyptian troops extracted them.

"The fact that Egyptian authorities ultimately acted with determination is laudable. With that said, Egypt cannot let slide this harsh blow to the fabric of relations with Israel and the gross violation of international norms," Netanyahu said in a statement. He also thanked Washington for its role.

British Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the embassy attack and urged Egypt to protect diplomatic property.

Some Egyptian politicians and activists criticized the violence, even if they backed the anti-Israel demonstration.

Presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahy called for the army to take a "serious stance matching the public anger" toward Israel but said violence sullied the image of Egypt's uprising.

Last month, a man scaled the embassy building, took down Israel's flag and replaced it with Egypt's. Protests continued daily but did not turn violent until the latest flare-up.

In response to the protests, the authorities had erected a wall around the building, which was quickly defaced with anti-Israel slogans and then painted in Egypt's national colors.

On Friday, the wall was torn down after a demonstration in Cairo's Tahrir Square calling for speedier reforms and a deeper purge of officials who worked for Mubarak, the former president on trial on charges including conspiring to kill protesters.

(Reporting by Yasmine Saleh, Mohamed Abdellah, Seham Eloraby and Sami Aboudi in Cairo, Dan Williams in Jerusalem, and Christopher Wilson and Timothy Gardner in Washington; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Alistair Lyon/Ruth Pitchford)

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Police: Mich. gunman targeted 2 ex-girlfriends (AP)

By TOM COYNE and JOHN FLESHER, Associated Press Tom Coyne And John Flesher, Associated Press – 34?mins?ago

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – An ex-convict who went on a deadly shooting spree targeted two ex-girlfriends, fatally shooting both of them and five members of their families, including his own 12-year-old daughter, police said Friday.

At the start of his hours-long rampage, Rodrick Shonte Dantzler tracked down his daughter and her mother and killed them, along with the mother's own parents. He then went to a different house and killed another former girlfriend, plus her sister and 10-year-old niece.

Dantzler "went out hunting" his victims, Grand Rapids Police Chief Kevin Belk said. He said the gunman used cocaine and alcohol sometime on the day of the slayings.

The 34-year-old former prison inmate began the spree Thursday afternoon before leading police on a high-speed chase through downtown Grand Rapids. He crashed his car and took several hostages in a stranger's home, then killed himself with a shot to the head late that night.

Investigators did not know what triggered the attack, but the police chief said Dantzler appeared to be "mentally unstable."

"I don't have a clinical diagnosis," Belk said. "Clearly he was a very troubled individual."

Records show Dantzler was released from state prison in 2005, after serving time for assault less than murder. A spokesman for the prison system said Dantzler had not been under state supervision since then.

After getting a 911 call that a man had acknowledged killing several people, police went to Dantzler's home, but he wasn't there.

Authorities soon got a call from a woman who said her relatives had been shot. Next came a call about someone finding four gunshot victims at another house.

Officers found three bodies in a home on Plainfield Avenue. An hour later, they discovered the other four across town in a house on a cul-de-sac called Brynell Court.

"It makes no sense to try to rationalize it, what the motives were," Belk said. "You just cannot come up with a logical reason why someone takes seven peoples' lives."

While police were investigating the seven slayings, Belk said, officers received a report of a "road rage" shooting.

Dantzler had apparently shot at a man through the rear window of the vehicle he was driving. Police spotted him, and began a chase that included Dantzler crashing into a patrol car downtown and exchanging gunfire with officers. A female bystander was shot in the shoulder.

Karissa Swanson, 18, said her mother was the woman who was shot, and that she had known Dantzler for many years.

Swanson said her mother, 35-year-old April Swanson, was driving and chatting on her cellphone when Dantzler suddenly pulled up beside her.

"My mom turned her head and he was right there, yelling her name, like, `April, April, I gotta talk, I gotta talk to you,'" Swanson said. "So my mom hung up the phone and called the police and was like, `He's right next to me.'"

The daughter said Dantzler chased her mother until they got caught at a stoplight, when he shot at her car.

Pickup driver Robert Poore, who also was shot during the chase, told police that the bullet ricocheted off a titanium plate that had been inserted in his nose during cancer treatment when he was a child, according to WOOD-TV. Poore suffered only minor injuries.

Dantzler drove a sport utility vehicle north from downtown and onto Interstate 96, crossing a grassy median and heading the wrong way down the highway while more than a dozen squad cars pursued him.

He eventually crashed the vehicle while driving down an embankment into a wooded area.

Dantzler then made his way toward a nearby home, firing several shots as he forced his way inside and took hostages he did not know, police said. Dozens of officers with guns drawn cordoned off the neighborhood in the northern part of the city.

That was around 7:30 p.m. Over the next five hours, Dantzler alternately threatened to shoot the hostages and pleaded with police to take him out, even asking negotiators whether there were snipers outside the home and where he should stand. He sometimes fired his gun at officers and inside the home, Belk said.

Authorities identified the dead as: 29-year-old Jennifer Marie Heeren, an ex-girlfriend; 12-year-old Kamrie Deann Heeren-Dantzler, Dantzler's daughter; 52-year-old Rebecca Lynn Heeren, Jennifer Heeren's mother; 51-year-old Thomas Heeren, her father; 23-year-old Kimberlee Ann Emkens, a woman Dantzler had previously dated; 27-year-old Amanda Renee Emkens, Kimberlee Emkens' sister; and 10-year-old Marissa Lynn Emkens, Amanda Emkens' daughter.

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Associated Press writers Kathy Barks Hoffman in Grand Rapids, and Corey Williams, Jeff Karoub and David N. Goodman in Detroit contributed to this report.

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