Sen. Angus King, Maine Independent, said Tuesday that the apparent assassination of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey on Monday appears to be primarily political, and not religious, in nature.
“It appears that the attack in Turkey on the Russian ambassador wasn’t a religious attack, but was a political one — revenge for what’s going on in Aleppo,” Mr. King said on CNN’s “New Day.”
Mr. King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said a separate deadly attack in Berlin does appear to be a jihadist one and that a separate attack in Switzerland was actually carried out on a Mosque.
“It’s a complicated situation, and just to say it’s all Islamic terrorism, I think, is … not the correct answer, as I said, and … will only inflame tensions and could conceivably make [them] worse,” he said.
Ambassador Andrei Karlov was shot to death while giving a speech at a photo exhibition in Ankara Monday. The assassin shouted about the Syrian city of Aleppo and yelled “Allahu Akbar” before getting killed in a shootout with police.
In a separate incident that German officials are reportedly investigating as an act of terror, a truck plowed into a crowded market in Berlin, killing about a dozen people and wounding many others.
On Monday, President-elect Donald Trump sent condolences to the family of Mr. Karlov and said he was “assassinated by a radical Islamic terrorist.”
In a separate statement offering condolences to the families of victims in the Berlin attack, Mr. Trump said: “ISIS and other Islamist terrorists continually slaughter Christians in their communities and places of worship as part of their global jihad.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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