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Saturday, Apr 20, 2013 8:15 AM UTC

Obama: Boston capture closes out a ‘tough week’

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Obama: Boston capture closes out a 'tough week'President Barack Obama gets ready to speak in the Brady Press Briefing at the White House in Washington, Friday, April 19, 2013, regarding the Boston Marathon bombing. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) (Credit: AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barak Obama said victims of the Boston Marathon explosions still deserve to know the motives and the planning behind the deadly blasts, even as he acknowledged that the capture of a second suspect in Boston brought to a close a trying five days for his presidency and for the nation.

“All in all it’s been a tough week,” he said. “But we’ve seen the character of our country once more.”

The marathon blasts and the hunt for the suspects that both terrorized Boston and captivated the country were the predominant worries at the White House. But the capture of one suspect Friday, following the death in a shootout of another, capped a frenzied week in Boston, Washington and elsewhere around the country.

A massive explosion leveled a Texas fertilizer plant Wednesday, leaving at least 14 people dead, 200 injured and a staggering 60 others still unaccounted. On Tuesday, letters addressed to Obama and to a U.S. senator were found to contain traces of poisonous ricin. An Elvis impersonator was arrested and charged with threatening the president’s life.

“I’m confident that we have the courage and the resilience and the sprit to overcome these challenges and to go forward,” Obama said late Friday at the White House, just over an hour after law-enforcement officials apprehended 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a suspect in Monday’s explosions at Boston’s venerable race.

Three people were killed and more than 180 injured in the blasts. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology policeman was killed and another police officer was severely wounded during the manhunt .

Tsarnaev’s older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was also wanted in the bombings and died earlier Friday in an attempt to escape police. The two men were identified by authorities and relatives as ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade.

Obama called the two men “terrorists” and said Friday’s capture “closed an important chapter in this tragedy.”

Still he added: “Tonight there are still many unanswered questions, among them why did young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and our country resort to such violence? How did they plan and carry out these attacks and did they receive any help.”

“The families of those killed so senselessly deserve answers, the wounded, some of whom now have to learn to stand, walk and live again deserve answers,” he added.

His remarks came a few hours after Obama spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin to thank him for what the White House described as close cooperation on counter-terrorism, “including in the wake of the Boston attack.” Putin expressed condolences for the victims in Boston.

In his comments to reporters late Friday Obama cautioned against a rush to judgment about the motivations of the suspects and “certainly not about entire groups of people.”

“That’s why we have investigations, that’s why we relentlessly gather the facts, that’s why we have courts,” he said.

The president also acknowledged the fertilizer plant disaster in West Texas, which he described “tightknit community in Texas devastated by a terrible explosion.”

“I want them to know that they are not forgotten,” he said, pledging to provide resources to recover and rebuild.

The president’s praise for law enforcement was echoed by Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio called their actions “a job well done under trying circumstances.”

More Jim Kuhnhenn.

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The week in 10 pics

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  • This photo. President Barack Obama has a laugh during the unveiling of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Tx., Thursday. Former first lady Barbara Bush, who candidly admitted this week we've had enough Bushes in the White House, is unamused.
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  • Rescue workers converge Wednesday in Savar, Bangladesh, where the collapse of a garment building killed more than 300. Factory owners had ignored police orders to vacate the work site the day before.
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  • Police gather Wednesday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to honor campus officer Sean Collier, who was allegedly killed in a shootout with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects last week.
    AP/Elise Amendola

  • Police tape closes the site of a car bomb that targeted the French embassy in Libya Tuesday. The explosion wounded two French guards and caused extensive damage to Tripoli's upscale al-Andalus neighborhood.
    AP/Abdul Majeed Forjani

  • Protestors rage outside the residence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday following the rape of a 5-year-old girl in New Delhi. The girl was allegedly kidnapped and tortured before being abandoned in a locked room for two days.
    AP/Manish Swarup

  • Clarksville, Mo., residents sit in a life boat Monday after a Mississippi River flooding, the 13th worst on record.
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  • Workers pause Wednesday for a memorial service at the site of the West, Tx., fertilizer plant explosion, which killed 14 people and left a crater more than 90 feet wide.
    AP/The San Antonio Express-News, Tom Reel

  • Aerial footage of the devastation following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province last Saturday. At least 180 people were killed and as many as 11,000 injured in the quake.
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  • On Wednesday, Hazmat-suited federal authorities search a martial arts studio in Tupelo, Miss., once operated by Everett Dutschke, the newest lead in the increasingly twisty ricin case. Last week, President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker, R.-Miss., and a Mississippi judge were each sent letters laced with the deadly poison.
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  • The lighting of Freedom Hall at the George W. Bush Presidential Center Thursday is celebrated with (what else but) red, white and blue fireworks.
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