DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — Turning to force to try to restore its authority in the vital industrial east, Ukraine's government announced Sunday it was sending in troops to try to quash an increasingly brazen pro-Russian insurgency, despite repeated warnings from the Kremlin.

Accusing Moscow of fomenting the unrest, Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov said in a televised address that such a "large-scale anti-terrorist operation" would ensure Russia did not "repeat the Crimean scenario in Ukraine's east." Turchynov pledged to offer amnesty to anyone surrendering their weapons by Monday morning.

Reliance on the military is a response that hints at concerns over the reliability of the police, who have often proven unable or unwilling to repel pro-Russian gunmen and other Moscow loyalists from seizing key state facilities. With tens of thousands of Russian troops massed along Ukraine's eastern border, there are fears that Moscow might use unrest in the mainly Russian-speaking region as a pretext for an invasion.

Speaking late Sunday on Russian state television, ousted president Viktor Yanukovych accused the CIA of being behind the new government's decision to turn to force, a claim the CIA denied as "completely false."

Yanukovych claimed that CIA director John Brennan met with Ukraine's new leadership and "in fact sanctioned the use of weapons and provoked bloodshed."

CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said that while the agency doesn't comment on Brennan's travel itinerary, the "claim that director Brennan encouraged Ukrainian authorities to conduct tactical operations inside Ukraine is completely false."

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A pro-Russian gunman stands guard at a seized police station in the eastern Ukraine town of Slovyans …

Ukraine now has "one foot into a civil war," Yanukovych declared, flanked by his former prosecutor general and interior minister, the two associates most despised by the protesters whose monthslong demonstrations were ignited by Yanukovych's decision to back away from closer relations with the European Union and turn toward Russia. Yanukovych fled to Russia in February, saying he feared for his life.

Earlier Sunday, Ukrainian special forces exchanged gunfire with a pro-Russia militia outside the eastern city of Slovyansk — the first reported gunbattle in the east, where armed pro-Russian men have seized a number of key government buildings to press their demands for referendums on autonomy and possible annexation by Russia, following the pattern set by the vote in Crimea last month. A Ukrainian security officer was killed and at least two others wounded.

Calling such attacks a "Russian aggression," Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in a Facebook post Sunday that special forces of up to 12,000 people will be drawn from volunteers who will be tasked with resisting attacks from pro-Russian forces in their local areas.

Russia's Foreign Ministry was quick to dismiss Turchynov's decree as "criminal" and accused Ukrainian officials of using radical neo-Nazi forces.

In an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council late Sunday, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin denied claims that Moscow was behind the violence.

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A pro-Russian gunman stands guard at a seized police station in the eastern Ukraine town of Slovyans …

"It is the West that will determine the opportunity to avoid civil war in Ukraine. Some people, including in this chamber, do not want to see the real reasons for what is happening in Ukraine and are constantly seeing the hand of Moscow in what is going on," Churkin said.

In response, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said, "These are not protests, these are professional military operations."

Unrest has spread to several municipalities in eastern Ukraine, including the major industrial city of Donetsk, which has a large Russian-speaking population and was the support base for Yanukovych. Ethnic Russians in Ukraine's east widely fear that the new pro-Western Ukrainian government will suppress them.

Several town halls and other government buildings were occupied by crowds of supporters of the referendum drive to give eastern regions wide powers of autonomy.

A police station and the local security services headquarters in Slovyansk, some 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of the Russian border, were the latest to fall to storming Saturday by well-armed and effectively coordinated militia. Both were still in the hands of gunmen Sunday, despite a government drive to retake them.

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Pro-Russia supporters beat a pro-Western activist who lies on the stairs during a pro Russian rally …

The police station was surrounded by a reinforced line of barricades, but there was a less noticeable presence of the automatic rifle-toting pro-Russian gunmen of the day before. Hundreds of residents beyond the barricades sang songs and shouted in support of the men seizing the building.

The only confirmed casualties in Slovyansk were among Ukrainian government forces.

Turchynov said a Security Service captain was killed and two colonels were wounded in Sunday's gun battle. An Associated Press reporter saw a bullet-ridden SUV on the side of the road and a pool of blood by the front passenger seat door, where the clash was reported to have occurred.

Turchynov said pro-Russia militiamen were responsible for the attack.

Vladimir Kolodchenko, a lawmaker from the area who said he witnessed the attack, said a car carrying four gunmen pulled up by a wooded area where government troops were standing by several parked armored personnel carriers and other vehicles.

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A photographer taking a picture of a car that was shot in a firefight outside the eastern Ukraine to …

Kolodchenko, who expressed sympathy for the pro-Russian groups, described the attack as a provocation and an attempt to create a pretext for an all-out assault on Slovyansk.

Those leading the storming of government buildings say Russian-speakers rights can only be assured with full autonomy for eastern regions — a move they insist should be endorsed by referendums. A similar vote in Crimea last month resulted in the peninsula splitting off from Ukraine and being annexed by Russia.

In Luhansk — a town of 420,000 across the border from Russia — heavily armed men still control the security services building. In Donetsk, 80 miles to the west, an occupied regional government building is now serving as the headquarters of a self-declared autonomous region billing itself the Donetsk Republic.

All occupations have drawn crowds of sympathizers.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry issued a statement late Sunday afternoon accusing "the Russian special service and saboteurs" of fomenting unrest and pledging to present "concrete evidence" of Russia's involvement at a summit on Ukraine in Geneva on Thursday.

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Pro-Russian gunmen check their weapons at a seized police station in the eastern Ukrainian town of S …

In a phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov late Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry "expressed strong concern" that the attacks "were orchestrated and synchronized, similar to previous attacks in eastern Ukraine and Crimea," according the State Department.

The Russian Foreign Ministry denied Kerry's claims, saying Lavrov blamed the crisis in Ukraine on the failure of the Kiev government "to take into account the legitimate needs and interests of the Russian and Russian-speaking population." Lavrov also warned that Russia may pull out of the Ukraine summit if Kiev uses force against "residents of the southeast who were driven to despair."

Two rival rallies in another regional capital in eastern Ukraine, Kharkiv, turned violent on Sunday when a group of pro-Russian protesters followed several pro-Ukrainian activists, beating them with bats and sticks, Interfax Ukraine news agency reported. Interfax quoted Kharkiv authorities as saying 10 people were injured at the rallies.

An attack was also reported on a police station in the nearby city of Kramatorsk. A video from local news website Kramatorsk.info showed a group of camouflaged men armed with automatic weapons storming the building. The website also reported that supporters of the separatist Donetsk Republic occupied the administration building, built a barricade with tires around it and planted a Russian flag nearby.

Regional news website OstroV said three key administrative buildings were seized in another city in the area, Enakiyeve. In Mariupol, a city on the Azov Sea just 30 miles from the Russian border, the city hall was seized by armed masked men. Local news website 0629.com.ua said 1,000 protesters were building a barricade around it, while armed men raised the Russian flag over the building.

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Nataliya Vasilyeva in Kiev, Lynn Berry in Moscow, Maria Sanminiatelli at the United Nations and Stephen Braun in Washington contributed to this report.

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Ukraine to launch antiterror operation

The country will conduct a large-scale movement to resist Russia's aggression, President Turchynov says.
'One foot into a civil war'

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — The man accused of killing three people in attacks at a Jewish community center and Jewish retirement complex near Kansas City is a well-known white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader who was once the subject of a nationwide manhunt.

Frazier Glenn Cross, of Aurora, Mo., was booked into Johnson County jail on a preliminary charge of first-degree murder after the attacks Sunday in Overland Park.

At a news conference, Overland Park police Chief John Douglass declined to publicly identify the man suspected in the attacks. But an official at the Olathe jail, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the case, identified the suspect as 73-year-old Frazier Glenn Cross, of Aurora, Mo.

"Today is a sad and very tragic day," Douglass said at the news conference. "As you might imagine we are only three hours into this investigation. There's a lot of innuendo and a lot of assertions going around. There is really very little hardcore information."

According to police, the attacks happened within minutes of one another. At around 1 p.m. a gunman shot two people in the parking lot behind the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. He then drove a few blocks away to a Jewish retirement community, Village Shalom, and gunned down a woman or girl there, Douglass said. Officers arrested him in an elementary school parking lot a short time later.

Police said the attacks at both sites happened outside, and that the gunman never entered any buildings. Douglass said the gunman also shot at two other people during the attacks, but missed.

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This photo provided by 41ActionNews, shows Frazier Glenn Cross. Cross is accused of killing three pe …

Authorities declined to release the victims' names pending notification of their relatives, and the identity of the person shot at the retirement community was still unknown early Monday. However, the family of the first two victims put out a statement identifying them as Dr. William Lewis Corporon, who died at the scene, and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, who died at Overland Park Regional Medical Center.

They were both Christian, and the family thanked members of their church congregation, among other people, for their support.

"We take comfort knowing they are together in Heaven," the family said. It asked for privacy to mourn.

Rebecca Sturtevant, a hospital spokeswoman, said family members told her Corporon had taken his grandson to the community center so that the boy could try out for a singing competition for high school students. Reat was a freshman at Blue Valley High School and an Eagle Scout.

Douglass said the suspect made several statements to police, "but it's too early to tell you what he may or may not have said." He also said it was too early in the investigation to determine whether there was an anti-Semitic motive for the attacks or whether they will be investigated as hate crimes. The Jewish festival of Passover begins Monday.

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A Kansas State Trooper stands near the location of a shooting at the Jewish Community Center in Over …

"We are investigating it as a hate crime. We're investigating it as a criminal act. We haven't ruled out anything. ... Again, we're three hours into it," he said.

Although the suspect was booked under the last name Cross, he is probably better known as Frazier Glenn Miller. A public records search shows he has used both names, but he refers to himself on his website as Glenn Miller and went by the name Frazier Glenn Miller in 2006 and 2010 campaigns for public office.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, said it reached Miller's wife, Marge, by phone and that she said authorities had been to their home and told her that her husband had been arrested in Sunday's attacks. Calls by The Associated Press to a number listed as Miller's on his website were met by a busy signal or rang unanswered.

According to the law center, Miller has been involved in the white supremacist movement for most of his life. He founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and was its "grand dragon" in the 1980s. The Army veteran and retired truck driver later founded another white supremacist group, the White Patriot Party, the center said.

Miller was the subject of a nationwide manhunt in 1987 for violating the terms of his bond while appealing a North Carolina conviction for operating a paramilitary camp. The search ended after federal agents found Miller and three other men in an Ozark mobile home, which was filled with hand grenades, automatic weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Miller tried running for U.S. House in 2006 and the U.S. Senate in 2010, espousing a white power platform each time.

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Overland Park chief of police John Douglass talks to reporters after a shooting at the Jewish Commun …

The attacks rattled Overland Park, a suburb of about 180,000 residents south of Kansas City.

President Barack Obama released a statement expressing his grief over the attack, and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback vowed to bring those responsible to justice.

"My heart and prayers are with all those who were affected by today's events," Brownback said in a statement. "We will pursue justice aggressively for these victims and criminal charges against the perpetrator or perpetrators to the full extent of the law."

Michael Siegal, chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, also said in an emailed statement that "no community should have to face a moment such as this one."

"Today, on the eve of Pesach, we are left to contemplate how we must continue our work building a world in which all people are free to live their lives without the threat of terror," he said.

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Associated Press writer Tim Jacobs in Chicago contributed to this report.

Frazier Glenn Cross is booked on a preliminary charge of first-degree murder after an attack that claimed three lives.
2 victims identified

Just hours after her father and son were shot and killed in the parking lot of a Jewish community center in Overland Park, Kansas, Mindy Corporon spoke at a vigil for the victims Sunday night, surprising mourners.

"I am the daughter of the gentleman who was killed and the mother of the son who was killed," Corporon said, eliciting a gasp from the crowd inside United Methodist Church. "I was there before the police and I was there before the ambulance. And I knew immediately that they were in heaven, and I know that they're in heaven together."

Her father, William Lewis Corporon, had driven her son, Reat Griffin Underwood, a 14-year-old high school freshman, to the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City to audition for "KC Superstar," an "American Idol"-style singing contest. Both were shot in a car William was driving by Frazier Glenn Cross, a 73-year-old man with a history of anti-Semitism.

William died at the scene; Reat later died of his injuries.

"I got to tell both of them today that I loved them," she added. "I was the last person in the family who saw them."

"He's a fantastic young man," Tim Howy, a local pastor, told KMBC-TV, describing Reat. "Funny, willing to the life of the party. Incredibly gifted."

Angela Wright, one of Reat's classmates at Blue Valley High School, recalled him as "a beautiful person" who "brought smiles to everybody."

"We were in choir together," Wright told ABC News. "I used to make faces at him sometimes. He made faces at me as we were singing."

Reat had a "beautiful voice," his friends said. He sang the national anthem at a recent school breakfast, and his "talents were on full display that morning," school superintendent Tom Trigg told CNN.

Mindy said William, a doctor, offered to take Reat to the audition because she was with her other son at a lacrosse game.

According to family members, William "cherished his family," moving from Oklahoma to Kansas to be closer to them.

"This is one of the nicest, kindest, most supportive families that we have here," Jacob Schreiber, president of the community center, said. "This has left us all breathless."

A third victim, a woman, was shot and killed in the parking lot of the Village Shalom Retirement Community in Leawood, Kansas. Police have not released her name.

Cross was arrested and charged with premeditated first-degree murder. He was seen in local footage shouting "Heil Hitler" from the back of a squad car.

At a news conference Sunday, Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass said authorities "are investigating this as a hate crime.”

Related video:

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel is holding secret talks with some Arab states that do not recognize it, looking to establish diplomatic ties based on a common fear of Iran, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Monday.

Amongst the countries he was in contact with were Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Lieberman told newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth - the first such disclosure by a senior Israeli official.

The two nations swiftly denied the existence of any talks with Israel.

Both these states, along with most other Arab nations, have traditionally been highly hostile towards Israel, which has only signed peace deals with two neighbors - Egypt and Jordan.

However, anti-Israeli sentiment was being superseded by a growing concern over Iran's nuclear program, Tehran's regional allies, and the menace of Islamist militancy, Lieberman said.

"For the first time there is an understanding there that the real threat is not Israel, the Jews or Zionism. It is Iran, global jihad, (Lebanese Shi'ite guerrilla group) Hezbollah and al Qaeda," the foreign minister said.

"There are contacts, there are talks, but we are very close to the stage in which within a year or 18 months it will no longer be secret, it will be conducted openly," added Lieberman, who is a far rightist in the coalition government.

Lieberman said he was in touch with "moderate" Arabs - a term Israelis often use for Sunni states in the Gulf and elsewhere in the Middle East that align with U.S. interests. He also said he would have no problem visiting Saudi Arabia or Kuwait.

"I have spent more than a few years of meetings and talks with them. As far as they are concerned, there is only one red rag and that is Iran," he said.

A spokesman for Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry said: "There are no ties or talks with Israel at any level." In Kuwait, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Khaled al-Jarallah said: "It is not true, we don't have these kind of talks."

FULL RELATIONS

Yedioth paraphrased Lieberman as saying some new Israeli-Arab peace accords would be signed in 2019.

"I'm certain that by then we will have a situation in which we have full diplomatic relations with most of the moderate Arab states. And you can count on my word," he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long hinted that Israel and the Gulf states share a similar goal in halting Iran's nuclear program, saying they all saw a mortal threat in its ambitious atomic drive.

Iran denies that it is planning to build nuclear weapons.

Senior Israeli officials have also said that like themselves, moderate Sunni states are worried that Washington was not taking a tough enough line with Tehran.

However, analysts have scoffed at the idea that ties between Israel and much of the Arab world could be normalized while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remained unresolved.

U.S.-brokered peace talks between the two are floundering, with no indication that a resolution is anywhere in sight.

"To Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, the cost of open relations with Israel at this time may be higher than the benefit, given the position of the Arab street," Israeli think tank, the Institute for National Security Studies, said in a report in December.

Lieberman, who has worked hard in recent months to soften his hardline international image, suggested Arab nations were as eager as Israel to be open about their shared interests.

"I think that they too are stewing in their own juice and reaching an awareness that there will be no choice but to move from the secret stage of the dialogue between us to the open stage of the talks," he said.

(Additional reporting by Angus McDowall and Sylvia Westall; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Alison Williams)

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — A massive explosion ripped through a bus station during the morning rush hour in Nigeria's capital, killing at least 71 people and wounding 124 in a bombing that marked the bloodiest terrorist attack ever in Abuja.

President Goodluck Jonathan visited the scene and blamed Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group which operates in the northeast of Nigeria and which has been threatening to attack Nigeria's capital. One official said he believed the bomb buried in the earth while the emergency management agency said the explosives were apparently hidden in a vehicle.

The blast destroyed 16 luxury buses and 24 minibuses and cars, said police spokesman Frank Mba, who gave the death toll.

Survivors screamed in anguish and the stench of burning fuel and flesh hung over the site where billows of black smoke rose as firefighters worked to put out the fires. Reporters saw rescue workers and police gathering body parts as ambulances rushed the wounded to the hospitals. State television has broadcast calls for blood donations.

Security personnel battled to belatedly cordon off the area as a bomb detonation team was combing it for secondary explosives, a common occurrence here. Thousands of bystanders gathered, ignoring warnings to stay away. While violence has torn the northeast where Boko Haram has killed thousands, the capital in the middle of Africa's most populous country has been relatively peaceful.

Two notable exceptions occurred when Boko Haram members rammed two explosives-laden cars into the lobby of the United Nations office building in 2011, killing at least 21 people and wounded 60 and when militants from the southern oil-producing Niger Delta in October 2010 exploded two car bombs at Independence Day celebration, leaving at least 12 people dead and 17 injured. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta which carried out that attack has been largely dormant since then, except for some sabotage of oil pipelines.

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People gather at the site of a blast at the Nyanya Motor Park, about 16 kilometers (10 miles) from t …

There was no immediate claim for Monday's bombing though bus stations are a favored Boko Haram target. In March 2013, the extremists drove a car bomb into the main bus station in Kano, Nigeria's second biggest city, killing at least 25 people.

Boko Haram's campaign to make Nigeria an Islamic state with Sharia, or Islamic law, enforced throughout the country poses the greatest threat to its cohesion and security and threatens nearby countries where the fighters have gone to train and fight.

"The issue of Boko Haram is quite an ugly history within this period of our own development," said Jonathan. "Government is doing everything to make sure that we move our country forward ... But the issue of Boko Haram is temporary. Surely, we will get over it."

In May 2013, Jonathan declared a state of emergency and deployed thousands of troops to curb the violence in northeast Nigeria after the extremists took control of entire towns and villages. Security forces quickly forced the Islamic insurgents out of urban areas but have been battling to dislodge them from hideouts, despite near-daily air bombardments and ground assaults this year on forests and mountain caves along the border with Cameroon.

The military has claimed it has the upper hand in the war, but the extremists have fought back with more frequent and ever-deadlier attacks.

Nigeria Islamists Kill 68 In Two Village Attacks: …Play Video

Governors and traditional leaders in the northeast have demanded that Jonathan end the state of emergency, saying it is causing suffering and has not been effective. Some 750,000 people have been forced from towns and villages, including tens of thousands of farmers who had to abandon their farms, risking a food shortage this year.

There was believed to be only one bomb detonation Monday with secondary explosions as vehicle fuel tanks ignited and burned. It appeared the explosives were buried in the dirt ground of the bus station, said John Ahwen, counter-terrorism chief of the National Security and Defense Corps. But the National Emergency Management Agency said it thought the explosives were hidden in a vehicle.

"I can't count the number of people that died. They took them in open vehicles. People were running and there was confusion," said civil servant Ben Nwachukwu.

The blast left a hole 4 feet deep (1.2 meters) in the ground of Nyanya Motor Park about 16 kilometers (10 miles) from the city center. It happened at 6:45 a.m. (05:45 GMT) as people were traveling to work.

The deadliest toll in the nearly 5-year-old Islamic uprising came March 14 when Boko Haram attacked the main military barracks in the northeast, Giwa Barracks in Maiduguri, and freed hundreds of detainees. Amnesty International said more than 600 people were killed, most of them unarmed detainees gunned down by soldiers.

Last week, Boko Haram suspects detained at the State Security Service headquarters in Abuja, next door to the residence and office of President Goodluck Jonathan, staged a failed jailbreak in which it is suspected that they had outside help. The agency said 21 detainees were shot and killed and two agents wounded in a shootout that lasted more than two hours.

The militants are blamed for attacks in northeast Nigeria that have killed more than 64 people in the past week, including eight teachers living at a boarding school that had been closed because of frequent attacks on schools in which hundreds of students have died.

Boko Haram — the nickname means "Western education is forbidden" — has been attacking schools, villages, market places and military barracks and checkpoints this year in increasingly frequent and deadly attacks. Its mission is to force an Islamic state on Nigeria whose 170 million people are divided almost equally between Muslims living mainly in the north and Christians in the south.

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Faul reported from Lagos, Nigeria.

Dozens of people are dead and more than 100 hurt after an explosion at a commuter bus station, police say.
Boko Haram suspected