Malaysian students at Ohio State University safe following 'terror' attack

PETALING JAYA: All 296 Malaysians studying at Ohio State University (OSU), where a 'terror' incident was reported, are reported safe.

Noorfaiqah Ibrahim (pix), a fourth-year Economics student at OSU, said the Malaysian Embassy in Washington called the students there to check on their whereabouts.

Ohio State University was on lockdown Monday amid reports a suspect was at large on the campus in Columbus, with students told to run or take shelter, emergency services said.

Noorfaiqah, who is Malaysian US East Coast Student Council president, said Malaysian students at the university had been contacting each other to make sure everyone is safe.

She told The Star that she was lucky as she did not have classes to attend at the time of the attack.

"I live about 10 minutes walk from the campus and I was planning to go there to study as our finals are approaching.

"But I received a message from the university at about 9.45am telling students that there was an emergency in campus," she said.

Another message came about 15 minutes later to inform the students that the campus was in lockdown.

She said she had not been to the campus since the lockdown was lifted a few hours after the attack.

Fellow student Saufi Mohd Nor said he was working out at the campus' gymnasium when he heard gunshots.

Saufi

The logistics management student said he saw a group of female students running towards the gym.

"Everyone was in a state of panic but for those working in the gym we have had safety training, so we started to close down the gym and brought the students to a room in the back," said Saufi.

He said there was confusion as the events unfolded, but the university sent out messages to inform the students of what was happening.

"The authorities were also quick to take control, so I started to feel safe (afterwards)," he said, adding that he will attend classes as usual.

Reuters reported that a car and knife attack by an Ohio State University student injured 11 people on Monday before the suspect was shot dead by a police officer.

The incident is being investigated as a possible terror attack, a US congressman and another government source said.

The suspect, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, was shot and killed by a police officer with less than two years on the force after driving into a group of people and then jumping out of the vehicle and stabbing people with a butcher knife at the school's Columbus campus, said Monica Moll, director of public safety for Ohio State University.

The assailant was an 18-year-old immigrant from Somalia and a lawful permanent resident of the United States, two U.S. government sources said.

Abdul Razak Artan

Ohio State University Police Chief Craig Stone told a news conference that Artan might have been as old as 20.

The officials said they could not speak on the record because of the ongoing investigation.

U.S. Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said intelligence agencies were assisting in the investigation.

"It bears all of the hallmarks of a terror attack carried out by someone who may have been self-radicalized," Schiff said in a statement.

President Barack Obama was briefed on the incident by Lisa Monaco, his homeland security adviser, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

A spokesman for Columbus' Somali community spoke out against the attack.

"I want everyone to know that we the Somali-American community stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our fellow Americans in condemning the sickening violence that took place in our city earlier today," Abdi Dini, a member of the Somali community, said at a news conference in Ohio.

The campus newspaper, The Lantern, on Monday posted on its website an interview with Artan that it had published only in print in August as part of its Humans of Ohio State feature.

In the interview, Artan, a third-year logistics management student, said he had recently transferred to Ohio State from Columbus State University.

Artan talked about being a Muslim and said that Columbus State had offered more accommodations for prayer.

"We had prayer rooms, like actual rooms where we could go pray because we Muslims have to pray five times a day," he was quoted as saying.

Artan said he was scared to pray openly on campus as a Muslim, saying that he feared that media portrayals of Muslims would give people the wrong idea about him.

"This place is huge, and I don't even know where to pray," he told the newspaper.

"If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don't know what they're going to think, what's going to happen. ... But I just did it. ... I went over to the corner and just prayed."

Of the people injured in the attack on Monday, one was critically injured, Columbus fire officials said. Eleven people were treated at area hospitals, including 10 taken by ambulance.

"It frankly took a piece out of everybody here at our beautiful Ohio State University that this could have happened here," Ohio Governor John Kasich said at a news conference.

With nearly 60,000 students, the Columbus campus is the state's flagship public university.