New York Post, Tuesday, December 1, 2020nypost.comPowerful gusts lashed the
city Monday, flattening scaf-
folding in The Bronx after
the National Weather Service
issued a wind advisory.
The sidewalk shed that col-
lapsed at around 3:30 p.m. on
Casals Place in Co-Op City
was reduced to metal slats,
bars and wooden boards,
WABC-TV video showed.
Department of Buildings in-
vestigators were at the scene.
The heavy winds and rain
also prompted officials to
fully close the Verrazzano-
Narrows Bridge at 2:30 p.m.,
hours after the upper level
was shut down.Tamar LapinGusts bust
Bx. scaffolding
China on Monday sanc-
tioned top officials at two
US bodies that promote de-
mocracy worldwide for
“blatantly” meddling in
matters concerning Hong
Kong, the Communist Chi-
nese Party announced.John Knaus, senior di-
rector of the National En-
dowment for Democracy,
Manpreet Anand, a regional
director of the National
Democratic Institute, Kel-
vin Sit, NDI’s program di-
rector for Hong Kong, andCrystal Rosario, a specialist
at the NDI, are now banned
from entering mainland
China, Chinese Foreign
Ministry spokesperson Hua
Chunying said.
It is not clear if the ban
will halt the officials fromentering Hong Kong itself.
The government actions
come after China approved
a contentious national-se-
curity law in June that al-
lows Communist Party au-
thorities to crack down on
“subversive and secession-ist activity” in Hong Kong.
In the months since then,
the US and China have of-
fered tit-for-tat responses to
one another’s efforts in the
territory, with both nations
sanctioning one another’s
officials. Emily Jacobs, WiresChina sanctions ‘HK-meddling’ US officials
By Yaron STeinBuch
and Tamar LapinIran’s top nuclear scientist was
assassinated from more than a foot-
ball field away using a remote-con-
trolled machine gun in a car —
which then exploded, according to
a local media report.
The semiofficial Fars news
agency gave the wild description of
Friday’s attack on Mohsen Fakhri-
zadeh outside Tehran, which it said
was carried out in three minutes.
The scientist — who founded
Iran’s military nuclear program in
the 2000s — was traveling with his
wife in a bulletproof car with three
security vehicles when he heard
gunfire and got out to see what was
going on, the agency reported.
That’s when the remote-con-
trolled rifle started blasting him
from a Nissan parked about 164
yards away before the car exploded.
Fakhrizadeh was hit three times,
including by a bullet that severed
his spine, the agency said.
Iranian-owned Arabic-language
channel Al-Alam claimed that the
weapons used in the attack, alleg-
edly perpetrated by Israel, were
“controlled by satellite.”
The two accounts contradict ear-
lier Iranian reports that the Nissan
exploded first before Fakhrizadeh
was ambushed by a hit squad of at
least 12 gunmen including snipers.
A top Iranian security official
made a similar allegation of a re-
mote-controlled device at Fakhri-zadeh’s funeral on Monday.
“Unfortunately, the operation
was a very complicated operation
and was carried out by using elec-
tronic devices,” Ali Shamkhani,
secretary of the Supreme National
Security Council, said at the cere-
mony.
“No individual was present at the
site.”
Shamkhani also blamed Iranian
exile group Mujahedin-e-Khalq
(MEK) for “having a role in this,”
without elaborating.
A spokesman for MEK, which has
been suspected of assisting Israeli
operations in Iran in the past, dis-
missed Shamkhani’s remarks as
“rage, rancor and lies” sparked by
the group’s earlier exposés of Iran’s
nuclear program.
Israel — suspected of killing sev-
eral Iranian nuclear scientists over
the past 10 years — has not offi-
cially commented on Fakhrizadeh’s
death.
Israeli intelligence minister Eli
Cohen told Tel Aviv radio station
103FM on Monday that he did not
know who was responsible for the
attack.
Meanwhile, Iran-controlled Press
TV reported Monday that “weap-
ons” used in the assassination were
made in Israel.
“The weapons collected from the
site of the terrorist act bear the logo
and specifications of the Israeli
military industry,” an unnamed
source told the English-language
outlet. With WiresDoc shot by remote-controlled machine gun
VIA REUTERSlong-range kill: Despite earlier claims of multiple gunmen, new re-
ports say Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and his car (above) were blasted by a re-
mote-powered machine gun in a vehicle 164 yards away, which then blew up.ReutersDiego Maradona’s doctor
tearfully claimed he was be-
ing made the “scapegoat” for
the death of the soccer leg-
end — whom the Argentine
physician said should have
been in rehab for his ongoing
battles with booze and drugs.
“They are trying to find a
scapegoat,” Leopoldo Luque,
39, said at a news conference
Monday after his Buenos Aires
home was raided Sunday in a
probe of a possible case of in-
voluntary manslaughter due
to medical negligence.
“There was no medical er-
ror,” Luque insisted of the 60-
year-old World Cup cham-
pion, who died eight days
after an operation to remove
a blood clot in his brain.
“You want to know what I
am responsible for? For hav-
ing loved him, for having
taken care of him, for having
extended his life, for having
improved it to the end,” the
doctor said between sobs.
Argentine prosecutors said
in a statement that no charges
had been brought in Mara-
dona’s death, but a probe
would continue. Lee BrownMaradona
doc: Don’t
blame me
pain: Leopoldo Luque, who
operated on Diego Maradona
days before his death, tear-
fully denied any wrongdoing.
Getty Images