Gunman kills two U.S. airmen at Frankfurt airport (Reuters)

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – German police arrested a man on Wednesday after two U.S. airmen were shot dead and two wounded in an incident on a U.S. Army bus at Frankfurt airport, authorities said.

Security round the airport was tightened and an investigation into the "terrible, senseless crime" was under way, said Boris Rhein, interior minister for Hesse state.

"Whether the incident was linked to terrorism I cannot say at this stage," he told reporters.

The suspected gunman was apparently a Kosovo national, he said. Police said he was 21.

A spokesman for Frankfurt airport operator Fraport said the shooting took place in a U.S. Army bus in front of Terminal 2. U.S. President Barack Obama said he was outraged by the attack.

Authorities in Kosovo believed they knew the identity of the suspected gunman but could not confirm it yet, Kosovo Interior Minister Bajram Rexhepi told Reuters in Pristina.

A police official identified the man as Arif Uka from the city of Mitrovica but no official confirmation was given yet.

"The government of the Republic of Kosovo is extremely touched and strongly condemns the killing of two American citizens and the wounding of two others by a citizen from Kosovo that happened today in Germany," the government said in a statement.

The United States has had troops in Kosovo since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaign pushed out Serbian forces. The U.S. troops there now are helping to oversee a fragile peace that has held since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008.

Major Beverly Mock, spokeswoman for the U.S. Air Force at Rammstein air base in Germany, said the identities of the dead airmen had not yet been confirmed.

"The German authorities have the shooter in custody," she said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking in Berlin, told a news conference: "We don't know the details but I would like to express how upset I am. We have to do everything we can to find out what happened."

(Reporting by Tilman Blasshofer; additional reporting by Fatos Bytyci in Pristina, Annika Breidthardt and Sarah Marsh in Berlin and Maria Sheahan in Frankfurt; writing by John Stonestreet; editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Officer shot in upstate NY melee dies; gunman dead (AP)

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. – A police officer died after being shot in the head Friday during an exchange of gunfire that killed a man who fatally shot a woman near a train station, authorities said.

Poughkeepsie Police Chief Ron Knapp released a statement in the evening saying the 44-year-old officer had died from his injuries.

The name of the officer, an 18-year veteran, was withheld out of respect for the family and pending notification of his relatives.

The gunman shot a woman to death in a car hours earlier, then was himself fatally shot minutes later in the struggle with police, including an officer who had taken a 3-year-old from the man and handed the child to a bystander, police said.

Knapp said it appeared the gunman shot the officer, but it wasn't immediately clear whether he was then killed by police gunfire or if he shot himself. Police didn't say whether the wounded officer was the one who'd taken the child from the man.

Knapp said he believes the man and woman who were killed were husband and wife and weren't from Poughkeepsie, a city of about 30,000 people about 70 miles south of Albany in New York's Hudson Valley. Their names have not been released.

A second officer suffered minor injuries and a half dozen others were involved, Knapp said.

Officers responded to a report of gunfire at about 1 p.m. and one saw the man leaving the scene with a child in his arms and thought the man had been involved.

When the officer tried to confront him, the man ran away, Knapp said. The officer caught the man, took the child from him and handed the toddler to a bystander. It was during that second confrontation that the 44-year-old officer was shot.

Officials said they didn't know whether the child, who was unhurt and taken by police, is a boy or girl.

Mayor John Tkazyik called it a tragic day for the city.

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Associated Press writers Chris Carola in Albany and Cristian Salazar in New York City contributed to this report.

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