Uzbekistan offers help to probe NY attack

The president of Uzbekistan has offered his country's assistance in investigating Tuesday's attack in New York by an Uzbek national.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the president of Uzbekistan, has told US President Donald Trump in a letter of condolences that his country is ready to help investigate the deadly New York City attack.

"Uzbekistan is ready to involve all its forces and means for providing assistance in the investigation of this terrorist attack," President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said in a statement on Wednesday.

"We decisively condemn all forms and manifestations of extremism and terrorism."

The Tashkent government said earlier on Wednesday it was investigating reports that an Uzbek man was behind Tuesday's attack which killed eight people and injured about a dozen in what US authorities said was an act of terrorism.

A US law enforcement official described the suspect as a US immigrant born in Uzbekistan, a landlocked, predominantly Muslim country in Central Asia that was part of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia regarded the attack as tragic and inhumane and sent condolences.

US police declined to publicly identify the man, but a source familiar with the investigation said his name was Sayfullo Saipov, 29.

CNN and other US media said Saipov had left a note saying he carried out the attack in the name of the militant Islamic State group and that he had shouted "Allahu Akbar" - Arabic for "God is greatest" - when he jumped out of his truck.

He had emigrated to the United States in 2010 and lived in Florida, other US media reported.

Thousands of men from Central Asia have been fighting in IS ranks in Syria and Iraq, and Uzbek nationals or ethnic Uzbeks have carried out several attacks on civilians in Europe this year.

Uzbekistan - which is predominantly Muslim - has generally managed to avoid a spillover of Islamist extremism from neighbouring, war-torn Afghanistan.


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Source: AAP



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