Finland attack investigated as terrorism

STOCKHOLM — A knife attack that killed two people and wounded eight others in southwestern Finland is being investigated as a terrorist attack apparently aimed at women, Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation said Saturday.

The suspect, who was shot after the attack in Turku and hospitalized with a leg wound, is an 18-year-old Moroccan, the bureau said. At a news conference Saturday afternoon, police said he had been in Finland since last year and was seeking asylum. They said he would be questioned at the hospital as soon as possible.

Four other suspects, also Moroccan citizens, have been arrested in Turku, and a search warrant was issued for a sixth. A car was also seized as part of the investigation, police said.

The knife attack killed two Finnish women. The wounded — five women, two men and a 15-year-old girl — were Finns, an Italian, a Swede and a Briton.

Crista Granroth, an official with the NBI, said it seemed that the attacker had deliberately gone after women, and that the men had been wounded while trying to stop him.

Siberia stabbings hurt 7

MOSCOW— A man wielding a knife attacked and wounded seven people on the central street in the Siberian city of Surgut on Saturday.

The police later shot and killed the attacker, Russian authorities said.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack through the group’s Amaq News Agency. But Russia’s Investigative Committee, a law enforcement group, gave no immediate indication in an initial statement that the stabbings in the Siberian city, an oil industry hub in the far north, had any link to terrorism.

Surgut, about 1,300 miles east of Moscow, is in the Khanty-Mansiysk area of Siberia and has a population of more than 350,000.

Nobel winner’s widow

BEIJING — The widow of Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who died of cancer while under police guard last month, has resurfaced for the first time since his death in a brief online video pleading for privacy and time to recover from her grief.

But many supporters of Liu Xia, Mr. Liu’s widow, said the video of just over one minute appeared to have been made by Chinese security authorities who have kept Ms. Liu under secretive guard, cut off from family and friends.

Inthe video, which appearedon YouTube on Friday,Ms. Liu said in a weak, rasping,halting voice that shewas away from Beijing andstill recovering from the deathof her husband, who was61. Mr. Liu’s liver cancer wasdisclosed only after it wastoo late for real hope of a cure.

Lebanese army vs. IS

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s U.S.-backed army Saturday launched its biggest military operation yet against Islamic State group militants who in 2014 gained a foothold along the tiny Mediterranean country’s border with Syria.

By the late afternoon Saturday, the army said it captured 12 square miles and killed 20 IS militants. It said 10 Lebanese soldiers were wounded.

Simultaneously, the Syrian army and it sally, the Lebanese Hez bo ll ah group, are pushingto clear IS militants fromthe Syrian side of the border,in the western Qalamoun mountain range. Hezbollahhas been fighting alongside President Bash ar Assad’sforces in Syria since 2013.