Uncle of Boston bomb suspect urges him to give himself up

The uncle of two men suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings has called on his nephew to turn himself in.

“I say Dzhokhar, if you’re alive, turn yourself in, and ask for forgiveness from the victims, from the injured,” said Ruslan Tsarni.

He also said that he wishes his nephews “never existed”.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, went on the run after his older brother Tamerlan was killed in a shoot-out with police in Massachusetts.

Tsarni, of Montgomery Village, Maryland, told US news channel WBZ-TV that the bombings had left him “devastated” and were “not comprehensible in our family”.

He said: “I just wish they never existed. I’m wordless. I’m shocked.

“I’ve been watching it and reading it. The people who did this, they don’t deserve to even exist on this Earth, that is what I think.”

Mr Tsarni said he had not spoken to the men — his older brother’s sons — for “a number of years”.

The siblings lived together near Boston, having moved to the US around a decade ago after growing up in an area of Russia near Chechnya. Mr Tsarni described the older brother as a “loser” and said the pair were “barbarians”.

Meanwhile, their aunt said she did not believe they could have been involved in the attack.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was married and had a three-year-old daughter in the US, Maret Tsarnaeva told reporters in Toronto. “He has a wife in Boston and from a Christian family, so you can’t tie it to religion,” she said.

But she said the 26-year-old Tamerlan “seemingly did not find himself yet in America, because it’s not easy”.

Tamerlan was killed last night during a shootout with police, and a huge manhunt was under way for his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar.

Ms Tsarnaeva said she wants proof they are involved in the deadly bombing.

“We’re talking about three dead people, 100-something injured, and I do not believe, I just do not believe our boys would do that... I don’t know them in the way that they could be capable of this,” she said.