A 58-year-old man was struck and killed by a subway train in Queens early this morning, police said.

Cops responded to a call of a person struck about 3:23 a.m. along the northbound E line near 46th Street and Broadway in Astoria. They discovered the man lying on the tracks unconscious and unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The investigation is ongoing. NBC News reported that the man was a transit worker who was working on the tracks when he was hit.

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A 63-year-old Queens woman has been arrested for stabbing and killing her boyfriend in their Queens apartment.

Cops responded to the call at 87-37 112th St. in Richmond Hill about 11:45 p.m. Tuesday. They discovered Lee Burrison, 55, on his living room floor bleeding from a stab wound to the chest, police said. He was transported to Jamaica Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Shirley Forbes has been charged with manslaughter. She was one of two women who live at the apartment and were questioned by police, The Daily News reports.

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A 23-year-old Florida man was struck and killed by an A train on the Upper West Side early Thursday morning.

Bobby Legrand Guin, of Mary Esther, Fl., was hit by a northbound A train at approximately 5:14 a.m. at the West 109th Street and Central Park West station, cops said. He was transported to St. Luke’s Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Police officers found some $20 bills in Guin’s hand and on the tracks, leading them to believe that the young man may have dropped the money and jumped down to retrieve it, The Daily News reports.

Guin had moved to New York to pursue a business career, the News reports. His family was notified of his death on Thursday.

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Cops are investigating after a pedestrian was struck and killed while crossing a street in Queens on Tuesday night.

Juliana Busto, 22, was hit at the intersection of 47th Street and Laurel Hill Boulevard in Maspeth about 11:16 p.m. Police officers determined that Busto was attempting to cross Laurel Hill Boulevard within the crosswalk when she was struck by a 2002 Chevy Avalanche traveling westbound on the road.

The woman was taken to Elmhurst Hospital where she was pronounced dead on arrival. The driver of the vehicle remained on the scene. The investigation is ongoing.

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A Long Island teen who was celebrating his 18th birthday in Manhattan on Tuesday died after he was struck by an oncoming train at an Upper West Side subway station. 

Liam Armstrong, of Nesconset, was struck by an express 2 train at the 79th Street station when he and his friends were trying to cross the tracks to get to the opposite platform, the New York Post reported.

The young men had exited an Uptown 1 train at the station because they realized they were on the wrong train and needed to head downtown. Instead of exiting the station to get to the other platform, they decided to dash across the tracks. One of the friends made it across safely, and another friend was still on the northbound side of the tracks when Armstrong was struck.

Armstrong suffered a severed leg and died from severe head trauma. He was a student at Smithtown High School East who was expected to graduate this year. His father is a detective sergeant with the Nassau County Police Department.

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The attack, which plunged capitals around the world into crisis mode, is a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.

“We are still dealing with a fluid and dangerous situation where a part of the terrorist threat has been eliminated in one part of the site, but there still remains a threat in another part,” British Prime Minister David Cameron told his parliament.

A local Algerian source said 60 foreigners were still in the facility and some were being held hostage, but it was unclear how many and how many might be in hiding elsewhere in the sprawling compound. It was also not known whether some might have been killed and the bodies not found.

Those still unaccounted for included 10 from Japan, eight Norwegians and a number of Britons put by Cameron at “less than 30″. Washington has said a number of Americans were among the hostages, without giving details, and the local source said a U.S. aircraft landed nearby on Friday.

As Western leaders clamored for news of their nationals, several expressed anger they had not been consulted by the Algerian government about its decision to storm the facility.

Algeria’s state news agency said earlier more than half of 132 foreign hostages were freed and that the army had rescued 650 hostages, 573 of whom were Algerians.

“(The army) is still trying to achieve a ‘peaceful outcome’ before neutralizing the terrorist group that is holed up in the (facility) and freeing a group of hostages that is still being held,” it said, quoting a security source.

Thirty hostages, including several Westerners, were killed during Thursday’s assault, the source said, along with at least 18 of their captors, who said they had taken the site as retaliation for French intervention against Islamists in neighboring Mali.

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Details remained scant – including for Western governments, some of which did little to disguise irritation at being kept in the dark by Algeria before the raid and its bloody outcome.

Two Japanese, two Britons and a French national were among at least seven foreigners killed, the source told Reuters. Eight of the dead hostages were Algerian. The nationalities of the rest, as well as of perhaps dozens more who escaped, were unclear.

Americans, Norwegians, Romanians and an Austrian have also been mentioned by their governments as having been captured.

Underlining the view of African and Western leaders that they face a multinational, al Qaeda-linked insurgency across the Sahara – a conflict that prompted France to send troops to neighboring Mali last week – the official source said only two of the 11 dead militants were Algerian, including their leader.

After an operation that appeared to go on for some eight hours, after Algeria refused the kidnappers’ demand to leave the country with their hostages, the bodies of three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Malian and a Frenchman were found.

So too was that of Taher Ben Cheneb, an Algerian whom the security official described as a prominent jihadist commander in the Sahara.

The gunmen who seized the important gas facility deep in the desert before dawn on Wednesday had been demanding France halt its week-old offensive against Islamist rebels in Mali.

French President Francois Hollande said the hostage drama, which has raised fears of further militant attacks, showed that he was right to send more than 1,000 French troops to Mali to back up a West African force in support of Mali’s government.

A Algerian government spokesman, who confirmed only that an unspecified number of hostages had died, said the tough response to a “diehard” attitude by the militants showed that, as during its bloody civil war against Islamists in the 1990s, Algiers would not negotiate or stand for “blackmail” from “terrorists”.

SECURITY IN QUESTION

The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions, however, over the reliability of what was thought to be strong security.

Foreign companies said they were pulling non-essential staff out of the country, which has only in recent years begun to seem stable after a decade of blood-letting.

“The embarrassment for the government is great,” said Azzedine Layachi, an Algerian political scientist at New York’s St John’s University. “The heart of Algeria’s economy is in the south. where the oil and gas fields are. For this group to have attacked there, in spite of tremendous security, is remarkable.”

Algiers, whose leaders have long had frosty relations with the former colonial power France and other Western countries, may also have some explaining to do over its tactics in putting an end to a hostage crisis whose scale was comparable to few in recent decades bar those involving Chechen militants in Russia.

Communication Minister Mohamed Said sounded unapologetic, however. “When the terrorist group insisted on leaving the facility, taking the foreign hostages with them to neighboring states, the order was issued to special units to attack the position where the terrorists were entrenched,” he told state news agency APS, which said some 600 local workers were freed.

A local source told Reuters six foreign hostages had been killed along with eight of their captors when troops fired on a vehicle being used by the gunmen at the Tigantourine plant.

The standoff began when gunmen calling themselves the Battalion of Blood stormed the facility early on Wednesday morning. They said they were holding 41 foreigners.

In a rare eyewitness account of Wednesday’s raid, a local man who had escaped from the facility told Reuters the militants appeared to have inside knowledge of the layout of the complex and used the language of radical Islam.

“The terrorists told us at the very start that they would not hurt Muslims but were only interested in the Christians and infidels,” Abdelkader, 53, said by telephone from his home in the nearby town of In Amenas. “‘We will kill them,’ they said.”

Mauritanian agency ANI and Qatar-based Al Jazeera said earlier that 34 captives and 15 militants had been killed when government forces fired at a vehicle from helicopters.

BAD NEWS EXPECTED

British Prime Minister David Cameron said people should prepare for bad news about the hostages. He earlier called his Algerian counterpart to express his concern at what he called a “very grave and serious” situation, his spokesman said.

“The Algerians are aware that we would have preferred to have been consulted in advance,” the spokesman added.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said he had been told by his Algerian counterpart that the action had started at around noon. He said they had tried to find a solution through the night, but that it had not worked.

“The Algerian prime minister said they felt they had no choice but to go in now,” he said.

The incident dramatically raises the stakes in the French military campaign in neighboring Mali, where hundreds of French paratroopers and marines are launching a ground offensive against Islamist rebels after air strikes began last week.

“What is happening in Algeria justifies all the more the decision I made in the name of France to intervene in Mali in line with the U.N. charter,” Hollande said, adding that things seemed to have taken a “dramatic” turn.

He said earlier that an unspecified number of French nationals were among the hostages. A French national was also among the hostage takers, a local source told Reuters. A large number of people from the former French colony live in France.

Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia said the kidnappers were loyal to Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran Islamist guerrilla who fought in Afghanistan and set up his own group in the Sahara after falling out with other local al Qaeda leaders.

A holy warrior-cum-smuggler dubbed “The Uncatchable” by French intelligence and “Mister Marlboro” by some locals for his illicit cigarette-running business, Belmokhtar’s links to those who seized towns across northern Mali last year are unclear.

Britain said one of its citizens was killed in the initial storming on Wednesday and “a number” of others were held.

The militants had said seven Americans were among their hostages. The White House said it believed Americans were among those held but U.S. officials could not confirm the number.

“This is an ongoing situation and we are seeking clarity,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

FOREIGN FIRMS

Norway’s Statoil, which runs the plant with BP of Britain and Algeria’s state energy company, said it had no word on nine of its Norwegian staff who had been held, but that three Algerian employees were now free.

BP said some of its staff were being held but would not say how many or their nationalities.

Japanese media said five workers from Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp. were held, a number the company did not confirm. The Irish government said one Irish hostage was freed.

Hollande has received public backing from Western and African allies who fear that al Qaeda, flush with men and arms from the defeated forces of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, is building a desert haven in Mali, a poor country helpless to combat fighters who seized its northern oasis towns last year.

However, there is also some concern in Washington and other capitals that the French action in Mali could provoke a backlash worse than the initial threat by militants in the remote Sahara.

The militants, communicating through established contacts with media in neighboring Mauritania, said on Wednesday they had dozens of men armed with mortars and anti-aircraft missiles in the compound and had rigged it with explosives.

They condemned Algeria’s secularist government for letting French warplanes fly over its territory to Mali and shutting its border to Malian refugees.

The attack in Algeria did not stop France from pressing on with its campaign in Mali. It said on Thursday it now had 1,400 troops on the ground there, and combat was under way against the rebels that it first began targeting from the air last week.

The French action last week came as a surprise but received widespread public international support. Neighboring African countries planning to provide ground troops for a U.N. force by September have said they will move faster to deploy them.

Nigeria, the strongest regional power, sent 162 soldiers on Thursday, the first of an anticipated 906.

A day after launching the campaign in Mali, Hollande also ordered a commando raid in Somalia on Saturday, which failed to free a French hostage held by al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militants since 2009. Al Shabaab said on Thursday it had executed the hostage, Denis Allex. France said it believed he had died in the raid.

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According to the NYPD, the AC was being delivered at E. 173rd St. and Grand Concourse. It was attached to the chain of a crane, and plummeted after the chain broke at 10:51 a.m.

The victim, identified by police as Tristan Mananghaya of Jersey City, was pinned under the appliance. He was taken to Bronx Lebanon Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

On May 29, an air conditioner crashed onto a playground after it dropped from a 20th floor window at the public housing complex Holmes Towers in Yorkville. The NYCHA has a set of rules and regulations that tenants are required to follow when installing AC units.

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According to police, 53-year-old Viktor Avadyayev had gotten out of the limousine when it arrived at his home near Kings Highway and Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn around 6:50 p.m. Sunday. He was standing behind the limo, when the vehicle reversed, striking Avadyayev.

According to the New York Post, Avadyayev was pinned against parked cars, then dragged several yards down Brooklyn Street.

The driver, 50-year-old Yan Krainert, is also charged with DWI and criminally negligent homicide.

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The boy was visiting the zoo with his 34-year-old mother, who had put him on the railing for a better view of the animals, known as African painted dogs, police said.

The zoo was closed immediately after the incident on Sunday and remained shut on Monday.

Authorities are trying to determine if the boy died from the fall or the attack, Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard said on Monday.

Eleven dogs swarmed the boy after he fell. Zookeepers rushed to the exhibit area housing the animals, firing darts to frighten them away from the child before police arrived.

Zoo staff secured 10 of the dogs but police entered the pit and fired multiple gunshots to kill the last dog, which was particularly aggressive toward the child and the officers, authorities said.

African painted dogs are endangered and native to sub-Saharan Africa, according to the National Geographic website.

The animals have an average size of just over 2 feet to 3.5 feet. They are also known as Cape hunting dogs or painted dogs because of their mottled coats with patches of red, black, brown, white and yellow fur.

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The police officer, Arthur Lopez, 29, was fatally shot after pulling over a driver spotted leaving the scene of a traffic accident on the Cross Island Parkway in Queens today, police officials told Metro.

Fuller, who is in the hospital in guarded condition, is also accused of shooting and killing a passing motorist.

Nassau County police officials said Lopez pulled over Fuller’s car just after 11 a.m., near 241st Street and Jamaica Avenue, near the Belmont Park racetrack. When he approached the car, he allegedly shot Lopez in the chest before running over to another car where he shot and killed Brooklyn resident Raymond Facey, 52, at point-blank range before fleeing in the man’s vehicle, officials said. Lopez was not wearing a bulletproof vest.

Lopez, who lived in Babylon, N.Y., died at North Shore Long Island Jewish Hospital. He was an eight-year veteran of the force and a member of the department’s Emergency Services Unit.

Fuller spent five years in jail for attempted murder in 2004 and also was arrested for possession of a controlled substance in 2010, according to police.

Arthur Lopez

Lopez was the police officer fatally shot after pulling over a driver spotted leaving the scene of a traffic accident on the Cross Island Parkway in Queens.
   
He was 29 years old and an eight-year veteran.

He worked for the department’s Emergency Services Unit.   

(Photo: Getty)

Police officers stand at the scene where a Nassau County Officer Arthur Lopez was shot and killed.

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32-year-old Christopher Brahan was hired for a $150 shift to replace the regular bouncer for Saturday night at Pat’s Palm Tree Inn on Church Avenue in Flatbush, according to the New York Post.

A group of men were tossed out of the club for fighting just before 4:30 a.m. According to police, one of those men returned with a gun just minutes later.

Brahan, who was standing in the doorway, was first shot in the foot. When he collapsed, the gunman fired seven more shots. Brahan was pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital.

“It’s like a nightmare in my head,” Patricia Watson, the club’s owner, told the Post. She was hosting her 50th birthday party at the venue Saturday night.

The NYPD has not yet named a suspect.

Brahan’s half-brother, Douglas Smith, was gunned down three years ago after an argument over a piece of equipment at a local gym on the same street just half a mile away.

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The FDNY confirmed at least seven people are being treated after the shooting, which broke out at 9 am. Four people were actually shot and two people were killed, according to NBC New York. One of those people is reportedly the gunman, who was shot and killed by NYPD officers.

The other injuries are a result of people being trampled as bystanders fled the scene in panic immediately after the shooting.

The shooting took place in front of the building near 33rd Street and Fifth Avenue.

Victims of the shooting have been transported from the scene.

The gunman may have been a disgruntled employee who was fired from his job at a business inside the building yesterday. He reportedly tried to re-enter the building this morning, but was turned away by security. That’s when he exited the building and opened fire.

A large police presence, joined by the FBI, is still at the Empire State Building. The NYPD would not confirm details.

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Neighbors at the apartment building where Lloyd lived erected a makeshift shrine to the murdered child, placing candles, teddy bears and a basketball out on the sidewalk yesterday.

Candles are placed at the spot on the playground where Morgan was shot, above. In the background, a man washes away blood from the tragic shooting.

 
“When he comes outside they have him here on his bike or his ball,” Lloyd’s neighbor, Melody Nelson, told Metro, of the boy. “That’s all he did was play.”
 
She described Lloyd as well behaved, and said Lloyd’s parents were quiet and hard working.
 
“They’re trying to hang in there,” Nelson said, when asked how the parents were holding up.
 
Police have not yet made any arrests.

Morgan’s basketball remains on the grass at the playground.

Young victims of gun violence

Lloyd Morgan is at least the fourth New York City child under age 10 to be struck by stray gunfire this year. Here are the others, all of whom survived:

- July 8: Three-year-old Isaiah Rivera was shot in the leg while playing in a sprinkler in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
- April 26: Nine-year-old Dulce Cabrera was grazed in the foot by a bullet while walking home from church in East New York, Brooklyn.
- February 21: Eight-year-old Armando Bigo was shot in the shoulder while buying potato chips at a bodega in the Soundview section of the Bronx.

Melody Nelson, above, places a baseball bat at the shrine neighbors erected for Morgan outside the apartment building where he lived.

Bloomberg once again makes gun control push

The slaying of Lloyd, along with the recent massacre in a Colorado movie theater, has prompted Mayor Michael Bloomberg and a number of other city officials to continue to speak out on gun violence.
 
“Four years old, life snuffed out,” Bloomberg said Monday at a press conference. “There’s not a lot else to say. We all know the scourge of guns on our streets, and we have to get them off.”
 
For at least the third time in two days, Bloomberg also publicly criticized Barack Obama and Mitt Romney for not standing up more forcibly against illegal guns and gun loopholes.
 
“During the next presidential term, there will be 48,000 Americans killed with illegal guns,” the mayor said. “It seems to me not unreasonable that whoever wants to be president should tell us what they’re going to do about it before we go to the ballot box.”

An RIP sign for the slain child at his apartment building.

Child’s murder makes some reconsider stop and frisk

Assemblyman Eric A. Stevenson, who represents the Bronx neighborhood were Lloyd was slain, was another politician to speak out today, declaring that he would re-think his objections to the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk program.
 
“If stop and frisk can prevent these types of crimes maybe we should have it,” said Stevenson, who planned an anti-violence rally for 5 p.m. today at the Forest Houses basketball court.
 
Nonetheless, a man who identified himself as Lloyd’s godfather said he didn’t think stop and frisk would have prevented the shootout.
 
“Stop and frisk is aimed at the wrong people,” said the godfather, who declined to give his name. “It’s aimed at the regular people that are walking down the block, going to the store. I have been stopped several times, no weapons.”

A shrine for the boy included a baseball bat, stuffed animals, candles and juice boxes.

All photos: Kevin C. Downs/Metro

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One of the victims of the gunman who opened fire into the crowd of people watching a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises,” was Jessica Ghawi, a young sports journalist who had narrowly escaped a similar mass shooting at Toronto’s Eaton Centre in June.

Ghawi (who goes by Jessica Redfield online) wrote on her blog June 5 about the experience of cheating death, describing her sudden urge to get fresh air before a gunman opened fire in the exact area where she had been just moments before.

Her Twitter account shows a back and forth with a follower yesterday about her plans to see the newest Batman film. The final tweet she sent before she was killed last night at the Aurora, C.O. theater said, “THE MOVIE DOESN’T START FOR 20 MINUTES.” 

The Colorado shooter, dressed in black and a gas mask, threw a can of tear gas into the theater about 20 minutes after the film started. He then sprayed the crowd with bullets, killing Ghawi and at least 11 others and injuring dozens of people.

Ghawi had shared in her blog after the Eaton shooting that she discovered a new-found appreciation for life:  

I say all the time that every moment we have to live our life is a blessing. So often I have found myself taking it for granted. Every hug from a family member. Every laugh we share with friends. Even the times of solitude are all blessings. Every second of every day is a gift. After Saturday evening, I know I truly understand how blessed I am for each second I am given.

The suspect in last night’s shooting, 24-year-old James Holmes, was arrested by police who found
him standing near his car after crowds of people fled from the theater.

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The soldier, who is accused of killing the villagers — including nine children and three women — is a trained sniper from Fort Lewis, Washington, according to the Daily Mail. The soldier has been in the Army for 11 years, serving three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.

A military official said the brain injury might have been caused by a car accident or from hitting his head on the hatch of a vehicle. He took and passed a mental health screening in 2008. The staff sergeant is married with children, but may have been going through marital problems when he opened fire in the homes of three Afghan families.

Officials say the soldier left his base in Kandahar at 3 a.m. wearing night-vision goggles. That’s when, they say, he entered the three homes and began shooting. Family members of the victims claim the soldier also poured chemicals over their corpses before setting them on fire. He then turned himself in at his base. He is now in pretrial confinement as Army officials investigate.

“He was walking around taking up positions in the house — in two or three places like he was searching,” said Mohammad Zahir, a 26-year-old villager who said the soldier wounded his father. “He was on his knees when he shot my father in the thigh.”

The incident has sparked outrage as Afghans call for the immediate removal of American troops in Afghanistan. The Taliban claims more than one soldier is responsible and has vowed revenge, calling the killings “blood-soaked and inhumane crime” by “sick-minded American savages” on its website.

U.S. officials say their exit strategy will not be affected by the killings.

“The focus of our overall strategy is not in reaction to a single event,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

“I do not believe that this incident will change the timetable of a strategy that was designed and is being implemented in a way to allow for the withdrawal of U.S. forces, to allow for the transfer of lead security authority over to the Afghans,” Carney said.

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An NYPD spokeswoman said the man was taken to St. Luke’s Hospital and was not expected to survive.

Power at the station was temporarily shut off after the incident. Northbound 1, 2 and 3 express trains were rerouted, though regular service has now resumed with some delays, according to MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz.

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American correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed in the besieged Syrian city of Homs on Wednesday when rockets fired by government forces hit the house they were staying in, opposition activists and witnesses said.

At least two other journalists and possibly more were wounded in the attack, the Syrian Network for Human Rights said.

One of the wounded was named as British photographer Paul Conroy, the other as Edith Bouvier of France’s Le Figaro newspaper. She was said to be in serious condition.

A witness contacted by Reuters from Amman said shells hit the house in the opposition-held Baba Amro district of Homs which was being used as a media centre. A rocket hit them when they tried to escape.

Colvin and Ochlik were both prize-winning veterans of wars in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere.

The British-based Colvin, who worked for the Sunday Times, lost an eye when she suffered a shrapnel wound while working in Sri Lanka in 2001. In public appearances after that attack, she wore a black eye patch.

Among her awards was a Martha Gelhorn Prize in 2009 for distinguished work over many years

Ochlik was born in France in 1983 and first covered conflict in Haiti at the age of 20. Most recently he photographed the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

He won first prize for general news in this year’s World Press Photo awards for a photo of a rebel fighter in Libya and ran his own agency, IP3 Press.

In Paris, Reporters Without Borders said Bouvier working as a freelancer for Le Figaro newspaper.

Video broadcast from Homs showed the bodies among the rubble.

“We don’t know if the building was deliberately targeted… we urge Syrian authorities to stop bombing Homs, said its Middle East director, Soazig Dollet.

Activist Abu Thaer said four journalists were wounded. They were being treated in a makeshift hospital but there was nothing that could be done for them and they needed to be urgently evacuated.

“There is hardly any medical equipment or medicine to treat people,” he said on Skype.

SUSTAINED BOMBARDMENTS

The Syrian conflict is especially dangerous for journalists to cover as opposition and rebel forces are for the most part bottled up in enclaves which can only be reached by hazardous journeys.

A Syrian photographer, Rami al-Sayed, died on Tuesday because there was nothing to treat him with, Abu Thaer said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders have also documented the deaths of at least other four Syrian journalists.

Syria banned almost all foreign journalists from the start of the uprising March 2011, but has started issuing short-term visas for a limited number of journalists, who are allowed to move around accompanied by government minders.

Gilles Jacquier, of the French TV station France 2, was killed in January while on a government-authorized reporting visit to Homs. Last week New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid died of an asthma attack while returning to Turkey from an opposition zone.

Pro-opposition areas of Homs have been under a sustained bombardment from government forces since February 3. Several hundred people have been killed, activists say.

YouTube video from Homs activist Khalied Abu Salah, showed him standing in the rubble next to the bodies of Colvin and Ochlik, on the floor of a grey concrete hallway scarred with bullet marks and cracks from the blasts.

“These are the bodies of the American journalist Marie Colvin and this is the French journalist Remi Ochlik. They are martyrs of the random shelling on the neighborhood of Baba Amro … There are others injured, among them the journalist Edith who works for Le Figaro.”

He raises his fist defiantly and calls for urgent aid to treat the wounded in Baba Amro.

“I am sending a message to the European Union to move immediately. The blood of your own has mixed with Syrian blood. You need to move now,” he shouts.

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Andrew Ramirez, 2, was struck Saturday night in Elmhurst by a van after he reportedly ran out into the street in search of candy left behind following a Parks Department bust of illegal vendors.

Police said Ramirez was pronounced dead at the hospital, and the 39-year-old driver of the 2007 Chevy van was not injured. 

In a separate incident four hours later in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a teenage girl was killed in a freak accident by an out-of-control SUV — after she first saved the lives of six other children.

After seeing a Range Rover driving erratically down Pacific Street, where she lived, Kira Goddard, 13, shepherded six children to safety at 2025 Pacific Street, near Ralph Avenue.

But she did not have time to save herself and was hit as the Range Rover careened backwards. She was pronounced dead at the scene. No charges will be filed in either incident, police said.

Follow Alison Bowen on Twitter @AlisonatMetro

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U.S. weather officials said the tornado that hit at dinnertime on Sunday may have been the single deadliest in the country since 1953.

Rescue crews from throughout the region worked all night and battled a driving rain and thunder storm yesterday morning in the town of about 50,000 people, searching for anyone still alive in the rubble.

More than 1,150 people were confirmed injured, many with massive internal injuries, officials said. The number of dead and injured was expected to climb as rescue workers dig through collapsed homes and businesses.

A number of bodies were found along the city’s “restaurant row” on the main commercial street, and a local nursing home took a direct hit, Newton County Coroner Mark Bridges said.

At St. Johns Hospital in Joplin, 180 patients cowered as the fierce winds blew out windows and pulled off the roof. Others took refuge in restaurant coolers, huddled in closets or just ran for their lives.

Roaring along a path nearly six miles long and about 1/2 mile to 3/4 mile wide, it flattened whole neighborhoods, splintered trees, flipped cars and trucks upside down and into each other. Some 2,000 homes and many other businesses, schools and other buildings were destroyed.

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