US Army soldiers arrive at the scene following a shooting incident in front of Frankfurt airport March 2, 2011. A gunman shot dead two US soldiers at Frankfurt airport on Wednesday, German authorities said, adding they were investigating whether the incident was linked to terrorism. The gunman, who left two others seriously injured, was apparently a Kosovo national, said the Interior Minister for the state of Hesse, Boris Rhein. A spokesman for Frankfurt airport operator Fraport said the incident happened in a US Army bus in front of the airport's Terminal 2.[Photo/Agencies]

Boris Rhein, the top security official in the German state of Hesse, told German media there were no indications of a terrorist attack.

Still, a member of the US House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Patrick Meehan, said in Washington that it looked like a terrorist attack. The chairman of the subcommittee that focuses on terrorism and intelligence added he did not have all the facts.

Kosovo Interior Minister Bajram Rexhepi identified the suspect as Arif Uka, a Kosovo citizen from the northern town of Mitrovica.

In Mitrovica, family members identified him as Arid Uka, saying that he was born and educated in Germany where his family moved some 40 years ago. However, German police said he was born in Kosovo.

An uncle, Rexhep Uka, said the suspect's grandfather was a religious leader at a mosque in a village near Mitrovica.

A cousin, Behxhet Uka, said he spoke to the suspect's father, Murat Uka, several times by telephone from Frankfurt after the family was contacted by Kosovo police. The father said all he knew was that his son did not come home from his job at the airport on Wednesday.

Behxet Uka said he would be shocked if Arid Uka was behind the shooting, saying that like the vast majority of Kosovo Albanians, the family is pro-American.

The northern town of Mitrovica is best known for the ethnic division between majority ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs. The former mining town has also been the focus of reports that it breeds Islamic extremists.

Western intelligence reports have said the region could be a recruitment ground for Muslims with Western features who could easily blend into European or US cities and carry out terrorist attacks.

The Kosovo government said in a statement that it was "deeply moved" by what it branded as "a monstrous act" committed by a citizen of Kosovo origin.

"This macabre case is an individual act against the civilized values and the traditions of the Kosovo people who will always be thankful to the United States, the American people and the US government for its strong backing of Kosovo," the statement said.

Kosovo remained part of Serbia amid the collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, but a struggle for independence by ethnic Albanians there eventually led to the Kosovo war in 1998. The bloodshed was halted in 1999 when NATO stepped in and bombed Serbia, followed by the deployment of peacekeepers. The NATO-led Kosovo Force still has 8,700 troops there provided by 32 nations, including the US and Germany.

The last time American forces in Germany came under deadly attack was in the 1986 bombing of a disco frequented by US servicemen. Two soldiers and one civilian were killed and 230 others were injured. A Berlin court later ruled the bombing was organized by Moammar Gadhafi's Libya.

A leftist terror group, the Red Army Faction, was also responsible for a string of attacks on Americans in the 1970s and 1980s before the group was disbanded in 1998.

More recently, German police thwarted a plot in 2007 to attack US facilities by members of the extremist Islamic Jihad Union. Four men had planned to attack American soldiers and citizens at the Ramstein Air Base and other locations but were caught before they could carry out the plot.

The US has drastically reduced its forces in Germany over the last decade, but still has some 50,000 troops stationed here.

The airmen shot in Frankfurt were stationed at the Lakenheath airfield in England, home to the 48th Fighter Wing, the only F-15 fighter wing in Europe.