By Ece Toksabay

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish prosecutors are investigating why the off-duty policeman who shot dead Russia's ambassador to Turkey was not captured alive, state media said on Wednesday, as the number of people arrested over the killing rose to 11.

Ambassador Andrei Karlov was gunned down from behind while delivering a speech in an Ankara art gallery on Monday. His killer was identified by Turkish authorities as Mevlut Mert Altintas, 22, who shouted "Don't forget Aleppo" and "Allahu Akbar" - Arabic for "God is greatest" - as he fired the shots.

Russian and Turkey both cast the attack as an attempt to ruin a recent thawing of relations chilled by the civil war in Syria, where they back opposing sides. The war reached a potential turning point last week when Russian-backed Syrian forces ended rebel resistance in the northern city of Aleppo.

The state-run Anadolu Agency said prosecutors were investigating why Turkish special forces, who stormed the gallery after the killing, did not take Altintas alive.

Initial findings suggest he continued to fire at police officers, shouting: "You cannot capture me alive!" Anadolu said. The officers shot Altintas in the legs, but he continued to return fire while crawling on the ground, it said.

President Tayyip Erdogan defended the police actions. "There is some speculation about why he wasn't captured alive. Look what happened in Besiktas when they tried to capture an attacker alive," Erdogan told reporters, referring to twin bombings this month outside the stadium of Istanbul's Besiktas soccer team.

Forty-four people, mostly policemen, were killed and more than 150 wounded in the dual bombing, the second of which saw a suicide bomber detonating explosives while surrounded by police.

A Reuters cameraman at the scene of Monday's killing of the Russian envoy said he heard shooting from inside the art gallery for some minutes after special forces stormed the building.

Anadolu also said the number of people detained in connection with the killing had risen to 11. Security sources told Reuters on Tuesday that six people - including Altintas's mother, father, sister and flatmate - were in custody.

At Russian President Vladimir Putin's request, a joint Russian-Turkish investigation team has been set up. The Russian contingent is made up of 18 officials, including a prosecutor and two defense attaches, Anadolu said.

More than 100 people from the Ankara police department, mostly from the anti-terrorism unit, are involved, it said.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday it was too early to say who stood behind the murder of its ambassador. It has also said the assassination was a blow to Turkey's prestige, comments that are likely to unnerve Ankara.

(Additional reporting by Gulsen Solaker and Melih Aslan; editing by David Dolan and Mark Heinrich)

(REUTERS)

BERLIN (AP) — Authorities across Europe scrambled Thursday to track down a Tunisian man suspected of driving a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, as one of his brothers urged him to surrender.

Nearly three days after the deadly attack that killed 12 people and injured 48 others, the market in the center of the German capital reopened, with concrete blocks in place at the roadside to provide extra security.

Organizers at the market decided to ditch party music or bright lighting, and Berliners and visitors have laid candles and flowers at the site in tribute.

German authorities issued a wanted notice for Anis Amri on Wednesday and offered a reward of up to 100,000 euros ($104,000) for information leading to the 24-year-old's arrest, warning that he could be "violent and armed."

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and broadcasters NDR and WDR reported Thursday that Amri's fingerprints were found on the driver's door of the Polish-registered truck that caused the mayhem Monday night. The daily Berliner Zeitung reported that his fingerprints were found on the truck's steering wheel.

The reports did not name sources and German prosecutors refused to comment on them.

One of Amri's brothers still in Tunisia, meanwhile, urged him to stop being a fugitive.

"I ask him to turn himself in to the police. If it is proved that he is involved, we dissociate ourselves from it," brother Abdelkader Amri told The Associated Press.

He said Amri may have been radicalized in prison in Italy, where he went after leaving Tunisia in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.

Several locations across Germany were searched overnight, including a house in the Dortmund and a refugee home in Emmerich on the Dutch border, German media reported.

The manhunt also prompted police in Denmark to search a Sweden-bound ferry in the port of Grenaa after receiving tips that someone resembling Amri had been spotted, but police said they found nothing indicating his presence.

An Israeli woman, Dalia Elyakim, and 31-year-old Fabrizia Di Lorenzo of Italy were among the 12 killed in the Berlin market attack, their countries said. Di Lorenzo had lived and worked in Berlin for several years.

German officials had deemed Amri, who arrived in the country last year, a potential threat long before the attack Monday — and even kept him under covert surveillance for six months this year before halting the operation.

They had been trying to deport him after his asylum application was rejected in July but were unable to do so because he lacked valid identity papers and Tunisia initially denied that he was a citizen.

A document belonging to Amri, who according to authorities has used at least six different names and three different nationalities, was found in the cab of the market attack truck.

Family members of Amri, speaking from his hometown of Oueslatia in central Tunisia, were shaken to learn that he was a suspect. Amri left Tunisia years ago for Europe but had been in regular contact with his brothers via Facebook and phones.

(Yahoo News)

• By NICOLE WINFIELD, ASSOCIATED PRESS

WATCH Pope Francis Visits 9/11 Memorial in NYC

Pope Francis on Thursday denounced the resistance he's encountering in reforming the Vatican bureaucracy, saying some of it is inspired by the devil and that the prelates who work for him must undergo "permanent purification" to serve the Catholic Church better.

For the third year in a row, Francis took the Vatican bureaucracy to task in his annual Christmasgreeting. He said the reform process he was elected to push through in 2013 isn't aimed at a superficial face-lift for the Holy See, but rather a profound change in mentality among his collaborators.

"Dear brothers, it's not the wrinkles in the church that you should fear, but the stains!" he said.

In 2014, Francis stunned the Vatican Curia, or administration, when he listed the 15 "spiritual ailments" its members were suffering. He accused them of using their careers to grab power and wealth, of living "hypocritical" double lives and of forgetting — due to "spiritual Alzheimer's" — that they're supposed to be joyful men of God.

Last year, Francis listed a "catalog of virtues" they were supposed to show instead, including honesty, sobriety, respect and humility.

This year, he gave the priests, bishops and cardinals who work for him 12 guidelines that are inspiring his reform process, which has involved consolidating Vatican departments and creating new ones.

He called for a "definitive end" to the Vatican's face-saving way of getting rid of unqualified or problematic staff by promoting them to a higher office.

"This is a cancer!" Francis said.

Francis said it's entirely natural that there should be resistance during such a profound process of reform — but he said there's good resistance and bad.

Positive resistance is an open willingness for dialogue but "hidden" resistance comes from the "fearful or hardened hearts" of people who say they want change but really don't, he said.

And then there's "malevolent resistance ... when the devil inspires nasty intentions often dressed as lambs."

He urged his collaborators to undergo an ongoing process of spiritual purification guided by the Gospel. Later, he told staff who work for the Vatican City State that the Gospel also should dictate the Vatican's labor practices to make sure people have proper contracts.

"No employment off-the-books. No subterfuge," he said.

———

This version corrects translation to "lamb" sted "angel" the reference to the devil inspiring intentions "dressed as lambs."


(abcNEWS)

BY MICHAEL GRYBOSKI , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER