By JIM VERTUNO and LEKAN OYEKANAMI

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The gunman who opened fire outside a Texas bar and killed two people in an attack that wounded 14 others was not on the radar of authorities before the attack, federal and local investigators said Monday.

Both the FBI and police in Austin said Monday that it’s too soon to identify the motive behind the mass shooting early Sunday.

The FBI has said it’s investigating the shooting as a potential act of terrorism, coming after the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Iran.

“Our ultimate goal in everything we do is to determine the motive,” Alex Doran, the acting agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio office, said during a news conference.

Police identified the gunman as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne. He was wearing clothes with an Iranian flag design and bearing the words “Property of Allah” during the attack, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.

Investigators are poring over thousands of hours of video and police said there are more than 150 witnesses to interview.

A map showing the location of the shooting in downtown Austin. (AP Digital Embed)

The gunman legally bought the weapons used in the attack several years ago in San Antonio, said Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis.

She identified the two victims as 24-year-old Savitha Shan and 22-year-old Ryder Harrington.

Harrington was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity at Texas Tech University, his fraternity said in an Instagram post.

Diagne was originally from Senegal, according to multiple people briefed on the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.

He first entered the U.S in 2000 on a B-2 tourist visa and became a lawful permanent resident six years later after marrying a U.S. citizen, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The shooting erupted outside Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden along Sixth Street, a nightlife destination filled with bars and music clubs close to the University of Texas at Austin.

The gunman drove past the bar that was packed with students before circling back and firing the first shots from his SUV at people on the sidewalk and inside the bar, police said.

Inside the bar and across the street next to a food truck, some students dove for cover while others were motionless, trying to understand what was happening.

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The shooting stopped for a moment.

The suspect parked, got out with a rifle and began shooting at others before officers rushed to the intersection and shot him, the police chief said.

University of Texas at Austin President Jim Davis said Sunday that some of those affected included “members of our Longhorn family.”

The FBI said just hours after the shooting that they found “indicators” on the gunman and in his vehicle leading them to look into the possibility of terrorism.

Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer, Eric Tucker and Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed.

By The Associated Press

The distinctive buzz of Iranian-designed drones has become a familiar sound in Ukraine over the past four years. Now, it’s increasingly heard across the Persian Gulf as Tehran strikes back with the cheap but effective weapons following the attack by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.

The Shahed drones have made a transformative impact on modern warfare, with Russia sending swarms of the deadly weapons into the skies above Ukraine on nightly missions.

While ballistic and cruise missiles fly much faster and pack a bigger punch, they cost millions and are available only in limited quantities. A Shahed drone costs only tens of thousands of dollars — a tiny fraction of a ballistic missile.

Available in big numbers, the drones have shown their capability to oversaturate air defenses and inflict painful damage at a very low cost.

The debut in Ukraine

After Russia’s botched attempt to capture the Ukrainian capital after its full-scale invasion with tanks, troops and missiles in February 2022, the fighting has turned into a war of attrition that has been increasingly shaped by drones.

While swarms of small drones have played a decisive role on the battlefield, both Russia and Ukraine also have increasingly relied on longer-range drones to attack deep into each other’s territory.

After reaching a deal with Tehran to import Shahed drones early in the war — Shahed means “witness” in Farsi — Russia localized their production. Russian engineers have increased its altitude, made it more jamming-resistant and fitted it with more powerful warheads.

The Russian replica of the Shahed — called “Geran,” or “geranium” — has been put in production at a plant in the Russian province of Tatarstan that has exponentially increased output. Since then, Russia has battered Ukraine with hundreds of drones in a single night – more than were used during some entire months in 2024.

By using large numbers in a single attack, Moscow’s strategists seek to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses and distract them from engaging more expensive cruise and ballistic missiles that Moscow often uses alongside the drones to hit high-value targets.

And while it flies slow at 180 kph (just over 110 mph), it can range as far as 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) and carry a relatively big load of 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of explosives. Ukrainians have dubbed them “mopeds” for their distinctive buzz.

Ukraine has relied on mobile teams armed with machine guns as a low-cost response to the drones to spare using more-expensive Western-supplied air defense missiles. It also has developed interceptor drones and is working to scale up production, but the steady rise in Russian attacks has strained its defenses.

Attacks in the Gulf and beyond

Following the weekend U.S. and Israeli attacks, Iran has struck Israel and also unleashed a barrage of hundreds of missiles and drones on multiple targets in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

They included U.S. bases, ports, airports, oil facilities and oil tankers, as well as some high-rise buildings.

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Officials in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates said Sunday that air defenses had dealt with 165 ballistic missiles, two cruise missiles and more than 540 Iranian drones over two days. While officials said they intercepted all air attacks Saturday, debris from the knocked-down weapons sparked blazes at some of Dubai’s most iconic locations.

Some Iranian drones flew as far as a U.K. military base in Cyprus. The runway at the Royal Air Force base in Akrotiri was struck by an Iranian drone Sunday, according to U.K. officials, and sirens blared there again Monday when two more drones heading toward the base were intercepted.

State-of-the-art U.S. and Israeli air defense assets have proven efficient in intercepting most of Iran’s ballistic missiles launched at Israel. But the attacks using large numbers of cheap drones hit some softer targets lacking the same level of protection.

Patrick Bury, a professor of security issues at the University of Bath, said drones have transformed warfare, thanks to the combination of “the persistent surveillance and the high-precision strike” coupled with improved targeting systems and artificial intelligence.

He noted the Shahed drones can be easily hidden in the back of a truck.

“What’s taken people by surprise … is the ferocity and the scale with which Iran has retaliated this time,” compared with its response to the June 2025 U.S. and Israeli attacks, Bury told The Associated Press. “What the U.S. and the Israelis are hoping, I think, and calculating, that they can degrade that enough to basically then take some of the steam out.”

Many observers noted the U.S. and its allies could tap the experience that Ukraine gained in dealing with Russian drone attacks.

“Our military must do more ASAP to institutionalize defensive lessons from Ukraine,” said Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, posting on X.

Jill Lawless in London contributed.

Kyle Anderson’s reunion with the Timberwolves was made official Monday, with the team announcing it has signed the veteran forward who previously spent the 2022-23 and 2023-24 campaigns with the club.

Anderson will be in uniform Tuesday at Target Center when the Wolves, ironically, play Memphis — the team with which Anderson just reached a buyout agreement to trigger the chain of events that led him back to Minnesota.

The 32-year-old forward is likely to get a crack at rotational minutes and will be playoff-eligible for Minnesota.

Anderson will sport a No. 12 jersey, his third number in as many seasons in Minnesota. Anderson was originally No. 5, but gave that up after one year upon Anthony Edwards’ request. He wore No. 1 in his second season, but that number is currently utilized by Terrence Shannon Jr.

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By EDITH M. LEDERER

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.S. first lady Melania Trump will preside over a U.N. Security Council meeting on Monday that will focus on children in conflict, one of her signature issues, at a turbulent time as the United States has joined Israel in attacking Iran.

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The U.N. says she will be the first spouse of a world leader to take the president’s seat at the United Nations’ most powerful body, which is charged with ensuring global peace and security.

The wife of President Donald Trump was given the opportunity as the United States takes over the council presidency for the month of March. In the past, presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers have often wielded the gavel.

The rotating president of the 15-member council gets to choose the subject and participants for some meetings. Monday’s meeting, which was scheduled before the war began on Saturday, is officially titled “Children, Technology, and Education in Conflict.” The first lady’s office said it will “emphasize education’s role in advancing tolerance and world peace.”

Melania Trump will be watched for anything she says, or doesn’t say, about the impact on children of the war her husband is waging.

Iranian state media has reported that a girls’ school in southern Iran was hit in an airstrike on Saturday, killing at least 165 people and wounding dozens more. The Israeli military said it was not aware of strikes in the area. The U.S. military said it was looking into the reports.

The council’s last meeting, on Saturday, was a contentious emergency session called in response to the war. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes as violations of international law, including the U.N. Charter. He also condemned Iran’s retaliatory attacks for violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations in the Mideast.

Melania Trump’s support of Ukrainian children

Melania Trump took the unusual step last summer of writing a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin before his summit with her husband and later announced that the effort had led to a group of children displaced by the Russia-Ukraine war being reunited with their families.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 resulted in Russia taking Ukrainian children out of their country so they could be raised as Russian. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has lobbied world leaders for help reuniting families.

First lady presides at a time of strained US-UN ties

President Trump has criticized the U.N. and withdrawn the U.S. from major U.N. organizations, including the World Health Organization and the cultural agency UNESCO, while pulling funding from dozens of others. The U.S. also has failed to pay its mandatory dues and owes the United Nations billions of dollars.

This has created a financial crisis at the U.N., with Guterres warning in late January that the world body faced “imminent financial collapse” unless its financial rules were overhauled or all 193 member nations paid their dues.

Asked if Melania Trump’s appearance was a positive sign for U.N.-U.S. relations, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said it showed “the importance that the United States feels towards the Security Council and the subject.”