The father of Egyptian gunman Hisham Mohammed Hadayet who is alleged to have opened fire Thursday at a check-in counter of Israeli carrier El Al in Los Angeles was a brigadier in Egypt's air defenses, a family member said.
Egyptian security sources and his family, meanwhile, said his wife, sister and father had all been questioned, although there was no word of a motive for the attack.
The former brigadier, Mohammed Ali Hadayet lives in the family household in the central Abbassiya district of Cairo, Hassan Mustafa Mahfouz, an uncle, told AFP.
Meanwhile, the FBI said Friday Hadayet had gone to the Los Angeles airport to kill. "Why he did that is what we are still trying to determine," FBI special agent Richard Garcia said. Hadayet was the fourth person in line at the El Al counter when he opened fire, authorities said, according to AP. He fired 10 or 11 bullets before he was fatally shot by an airline security guard.
The shooting could have been a random act of violence or a “hate crime,” Garcia said. He added authorities had not ruled out a number of potential motives, including terrorism, though Hadayet, 41, was not on any FBI or federal aviation "watch" lists.
Israeli officials said they would consider the attack an act of terror unless it was proven otherwise. A source close to Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Peres' granddaughter was in the terminal at the time of the attack.
Meanwhile, Egypt's foreign minister expressed surprise on Saturday afternoon at the furor over the attack, saying the motives were still unclear and similar incidents occurred frequently.
Egypt's official Middle East News Agency (MENA) said Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher told reporters in Cairo that such incidents occur repeatedly in the United States and other countries and said he was surprised by the exaggeration of this event in particular.
"Until now, nobody knows the motives behind this incident. We have to await the outcome of the current investigations so that we can review them," MENA quoted Maher as saying(Albawaba.com)
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