An unknown gunman shot and wounded five teens on a playground in New York's Brooklyn at around 17:00 local time (around midnight Moscow time).
Police said that five teens, ages 15 to 18, were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
There have been no arrests made yet, the police have launched an investigation, TASS reports.
Another incident took place in a Paris suburb commune of Magnanville. A French police officer have been killed in a knife attack by an unknown assailant. The 42-year-old police officer was in plain clothes when he was stabbed to death as he arrived to his house in the evening. The attacker then entered the house and held the officer’s wife hostage.
The Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said that members of a French police unit that arrived at the scene decided to storm the house. They fatally shot the attacker, found the woman dead and rescued 3-year-old son of the police officer. "He is shocked but unhurt," Brandet added.
He also said that the attacker refused to negotiate and was killed.
"The negotiations were unsuccessful that is why we made a decision to storm the house," AFP cited the Interior Ministry spokesman as saying.
The attacker who killed the police officer and held hostages in the Paris suburbs was a member of the ISIS terrorist group, BBC reports with reference to the terrorist's Amaq news agency.
The French President Francois Hollande will hold an emergency meeting over the incident in Magnanville today.
The French government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said on RTL radio that the killings in the Paris suburb commune of Magnanville were an "act of terrorism".
Francois Hollande, in turn, condemned the murder and expressed his gratitude to the staff of the Ministry of Interior.
"The President of the Republic has strongly condemned this odious act," a statement released by the Elysee Palace says. "We will investigate all the circumstances that led to this terrible tragedy," the document stresses.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council (UNSC) condemned the terrorist attack in the Florida Pulse nightclub in Orlando, qualifying it as a terrorist act, the official statement of the organization says. "The members of the Security Council condemn in the strongest terms the terrorist attack in Orlando," the document says. It notes that "the people were attacked for their sexual orientation".
The UN Security Council has expressed their deepest sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims and to the government of the United States" and wished a full recovery to those injured. The statement stressed once again that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever they are committed. The Security Council reaffirmed the need for all states to combat terrorism by all means in accordance with the international law.
The President of the National Strategy Institute, Mikhail Remizov, speaking to Vestnik Kavkaza, said that we should expect a sharp intensification of extremist underground activities worldwide in the coming months. "I think that there are grounds to expect that, because the operation in Syria to oust Daesh has its tangible effect. And while Daesh will be losing the advantage of a quasi-state, I think that the intensification is quite possible. Because the group's losses don't mean a defeat of the corresponding ideology and complete demotivation of its members. Because a military defeat is a serious ideological argument against the ideology, which is counting on its power, as it was in the case with fascism. In the case of Daesh, its claims to be a caliphate are linked to the control over certain territories in the Middle East. One way or another, military challenges would cause an increased activity of some terrorist groups in other parts of the world," the expert believes.
As to the question of whether modern power structures are able to withstand the network of terrorist activities, when terrorist attacks are unrelated to each other and carried out by lone terrorists, the President of the National Strategy Institute believes that the special services have extensive experience in confronting the terrorist underground, but if we talk about the special services of Russia and the United States, lone-wolf terrorist attacks are very difficult to restrain. "In fact, a little training is enough in order to commit terrorist attacks with an appropriate level of indoctrination, and such crude terrorism represents the most complex task for security services," the expert explained.
"The Russians need to be more vigilant in terms of everyday security. But mostly, it is necessary to draw conclusions in the sphere of migration policy; because it is not only the active underground participants which should be of a concern, but a potential growth of corresponding sentiments is also important, and this growth depends on a number of immigrants from Islamic countries and a number of new citizens among them. That is, the main goal is to prevent the proliferation of the Islam army at our own territory," Mikhail Remizov concluded.
The president of the International Association of Veterans of the Alpha Anti-Terrorism Unit, Sergey Goncharov, in turn, recalled that the extremist underground has already spread all over the world. "So, at the moment I am sure that it will expand, because as soon as the progress in Syria will be made, not all of these bandits will move to the Middle Eastern countries, they will move to Europe, the US and, God forbid, to Russia. We can feel the strengthening of these extremist sentiments. And everything we see in the US and France now is a proof that our feelings are right," the expert said.
Answering a question on how modern power structures could withstand the network structure of terrorist activities, when terrorist attacks are committed by lone terrorists, the veteran noted: "I would not take it upon myself to say that the intelligence agencies of the world are able to adequately fight terrorism, because we see that everyone points the finger at each other over mistakes. It is happening because at the moment the power of the extremist Islamic underground is quite large, and the security services were simply not ready for such a serious blow. And the second thing, the agent-operative work conducted by intelligence services in Europe and the US was insufficient. The third and the most important thing is that the more migrant Muslim settlements appear in different parts of the world, the more extremism we will witness. I think that it will only get worse in the future," the president of the International Association of Veterans of the Alpha Anti-Terrorism Unit noted.
As to whether the Russians should be more vigilant with regard to in terrorist attacks and crimes that resemble the terrorist attacks in the West, the expert is confident: of course, they should. "Russia is not a separate island of security. You know what is happening in the Caucasus. That is why I must say that today there are certain things that concern me. But so far terrorism is tamed in Russia, as compared to other countries, and we should credit our security services for that," Sergey Goncharov concluded.
