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"I don't want anyone to know any identifying particulars about me. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who says that he was the first to pounce on the terrorist can take all the credit for himself," the undercover security guard who bare-handedly took on the shooter at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday said yesterday. The guard, who told his story to one of the El Al flight crew, said that he had been standing a few meters behind the attacker when he heard two shots fired from a handgun. The guard said it took him a few seconds...

Jul. 7, 2002 Ticket agent's wedding plans doomed by airport attacker By TOM TUGEND LOS ANGELES Friday was to have been one of Victoria Hen's happiest days. Her family had planned a surprise party at which Victoria's fiance would formally propose marriage to the 25-year-old Israeli-American woman. Instead, her parents, Avinoam and Rachel Hen, and her brothers Nimrod and Udi, spent the day planning her funeral service, set for 2 p.m. today at Eden Memorial Park in suburban Mission Hills. Hen, who had worked as an El Al ticket agent for only six weeks, was one of the victims slain...

Today I went to the residence of the man who gunned down the two innocent citizens at LAX on July 4, 2002 to see what kind of story I could bring back to Free Republic. This is my story. Hesham Mohamed Hadayet lived in a newer, tree-lined, well-maintained, family-friendly but very quiet apartment complex in Irvine, California. His apartment is on the ground floor, on the corner of the building, near the entrance to the complex. There is an apartment on top of his unit, to the side of his unit, and to the back of his unit. There was...

INS Denied Residency to LAX Gunman ASSOCIATED PRESS LOS ANGELES- The government had started deportation proceedings in 1996 against the Egyptian immigrant who gunned down two people at Los Angeles International Airport. But the following year, he gained U.S. residency because of his wife, officials said Saturday. It wasn't clear what caused the Immigration and Naturalization Service to reject Hesham Mohamed Hadayet's first petition for permanent residency, INS spokesman Francisco Arcaute said. The deportation process was started after that rejection, then was stopped when Hadayet gained residency in 1997 through his wife, Hala, who had received an immigration visa through...

Filed at 2:48 p.m. ET KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A meteor may have caused the flash that alarmed an Israeli pilot flying over Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said Saturday, insisting it was not a missile. An El Al pilot reported seeing a missile fired from the ground over central Ukraine during a Tel Aviv-Moscow flight on Thursday night. Israeli officials said the missile exploded a few miles from the plane. Pilots of two other planes flying over the Dnipropetrovsk region reported seeing a big blue fireball that resembled a missile explosion at the same time, the ITAR-Tass and Interfax news agencies...

Ukraine: Meteorite may have caused flash that alarmed pilot By Yossi Melman, Ha'aretz Correspondent, News agencies A meteorite may have caused the flash that alarmed an Israeli pilot flying over Ukraine, Ukrainian officials said Saturday, insisting that it wasn't a missile. An El Al pilot reported seeing a missile fired from the ground over central Ukraine during a Tel Aviv-Moscow flight on Thursday night. Israeli officials said the missile exploded a few miles away from the plane. Three Russian pilots confirmed Saturday they had seen a sizeable flash in the area of the El Al plane over eastern Ukraine. The...

CAIRO, July 6 (AFP) - The family of the Egyptian gunman believed to have opened fire on an El Al check-in counter in Los Angeles airport said Saturday that financial problems with the Israeli airline could be behind the incident. "Egyptian security services affirmed Friday to the father of (suspected gunman) Hisham Mohammed Hadayet that the incident was due to financial problems with El Al," cousin Emad al-Omda told AFP. Al-Omda said that the Israeli airline had been late in paying for two limousines that it had rented from Hadayet's service. "We are sure that he had no connection...

Dear All, There is some chances that there could be a meteorite fall in Ukraine on July 4. Initially reports, including mass-media were that a pilot of Israel airlines IL AL flight from Tel Aviv to Moscow flying over Ukraine saw a possible missile launch. Yesterday evening explanations appeared (and I made some input in them e-mailing to various authorities) that it could has been a natural event, and a meteoroidal bolide is one of possible natural explanations. Today Ukranean authorities informed this, as a "possible meteorite", but investigation still continues. Unfortunately, info about the event is very sparsely (even...

<p>It's well-known that El Al has the world's most thorough airline security system. But unlike other airlines, El Al's security measures begin long before passengers attempt to board planes or check in luggage.</p> <p>Consider the swift and fatal result Thursday at Los Angeles International Airport, when an El Al security official shot and killed the 52-year-old gunman who had fatally wounded two people near the airline's ticket counter. Zvi Vapni, the deputy consul general for Israel in Los Angeles, identified the security man, who was being treated for minor knife wounds, as Haim Sapir. The Jerusalem Post named the security official as Haim Safir.</p>

Israeli Minister of Transportation Ephraim Sneh announced Friday afternoon (Israeli time) that he debriefed the pilot of the El Al flight who reported seeing a surface-to-air missile explode near his plane Thursday night, according to the Israeli news service Arutz Sheva. The El Al aircraft was in international air space over Russia at the time. "Sneh, a retired IDF brigadier-general explained the El Al pilot is a veteran Israel Air Force fighter pilot, a person who knows how to differentiate between aeronautical or weather entities and a missile," Arutz Sheva said. The transportation minister said that although the missile...

Israeli officials believe that the shooting incident at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport was a terror attack, even though the FBI is downplaying that possibility. Ticket agent Victoria Hen, 25, and diamond merchant Ya'akov Aminov, 47, both Israeli nationals who were residents of Los Angeles, were killed in the attack, which occurred on the busy Fourth of July holiday. The FBI named the assailant as Egyptian Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, 41, who had a green card and was living and working legally as a limousine driver in the Los Angeles area. Armed with two handguns and...

Police looking for possible links to terrorism searched the apartment of an Egyptian who opened fire at Los Angeles' airport, killing two people at Israel's El Al ticket counter before being shot to death by a guard. The shootout came on the Fourth of July, when the possibility of terror attacks had put security on high alert around the country. The FBI, however, was withholding judgment on whether to label the attack as terrorism. "We've never said it's not terrorism," FBI spokesman Matt McLaughlin said. "We can't rule that out, but there's nothing to indicate terrorism at this point." McLaughlin...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Trauma surgeon David Parkus waded into a deadly airport gunfight, helping to subdue the gunman and trying to save his victims. The Beaumont, Texas, doctor was standing in a ticket line about 30 feet from the Israeli El Al airline counter Thursday when a man opened fire, killing two people and wounding three before being killed himself. Parkus' account provides key details of the attack, which the FBI and Los Angeles police have refused to describe beyond saying it didn't appear linked to terrorism. Parkus, 39 and director of the trauma surgery unit at Christus...

JERUSALEM, July 4 (Reuters) - Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said on Thursday Israel with U.S. help would track down those responsible for a shooting attack on an El Al ticketing desk at Los Angeles International Airport that killed two people. "Peres pointed out the quick response and courage of the Israeli security agents at the site, and he added he is certain that Israeli and American security forces will succeed in searching for and capturing the organisers (of the attack)," said a Foreign Ministry statement issued in Peres' name. Earlier, Israeli Transport Minister said the shooting spree, during which...

Shooting at LAX, several injured....

Israelis with military or security experience seem to have the inside track with U.S. corporations and government agencies looking for anti-terrorism expertise. Boston's Logan Airport - which came under heavy criticism because it was the departure point for the jetliners that brought down the World Trade Center - hired a former security director for Israel's El Al Airlines in October. In New Jersey, where authorities were faulted for poor intelligence operations after it was learned that several suspected terrorists lived and worked in the state, Gov. James E. McGreevey recently appointed an Israeli as his special counsel on homeland security....