KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Investigators were seeking seven more people in the assassination last Monday of the half brother of North Korea's leader, including four North Korean men who left the country shortly after the killing, a top police official said Sunday.
Since Kim Jong Nam's death last week, authorities have been trying to piece together details of what appeared to be an assassination. Malaysian police have so far arrested four people carrying IDs from North Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Malaysia's deputy national police chief, Noor Rashid Ibrahim, said four North Korean suspects were on the run. The men arrived in Malaysia on different days beginning Jan. 31 and flew out of the country last Monday, when Kim died, Rashid said.
"I am not going disclose where they are," he told a room packed with journalists, adding that Interpol was helping with the investigation.
Rashid showed photographs of the four men, who were traveling on regular -- not diplomatic -- passports.
He gave their names as Ri Ji Hyon, 33; Hong Song Hac, 34; O Jong Gil, 55; and Ri Jae Nam, 57.
Rashid declined to say where they were headed when they left Malaysia or to give their current whereabouts. However, Channel NewsAsia, citing a senior police official, said the four arrived Friday in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, by way of Jakarta, Indonesia; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Vladivostok, Russia.
Rashid said the police were seeking three other men whose whereabouts were unknown, including a North Korean identified as Ri Ji U, 30, also known as James.
Local news accounts said two women had carried out the attack by injecting Kim with a poison or wiping his face with it.
He sought help at an airport customer service desk and said "two unidentified women had swabbed or had wiped his face with a liquid and that he felt dizzy," Rashid said.
Rashid declined to say whether a widely circulated photo of a woman wearing a white T-shirt with the letters "LOL" was one of the two women who had been arrested. The photo, taken from airport security videos, was leaked to local media.
Kim, the half brother of Kim Jong Un, died en route to a hospital after suffering a seizure, officials say.
Rashid said Sunday that he expected autopsy results to be released within days.
"We have to send a sample to the chemistry department, we have to send a sample for toxicology tests," he said.
Investigators also want to speak to Kim Jong Nam's next of kin to formally identify the body. He is believed to have two sons and a daughter with two women living in Beijing and Macau.
Rashid said charges against the four suspects in custody would be determined by prosecutors.
According to police, the Indonesian woman is a spa masseuse and the Malaysian man, a caterer, is believed to be her boyfriend. The Vietnamese woman works at an entertainment outlet and the North Korean man works in the information technology department of a Malaysian company. Police said the North Korean man's work permit expired Feb. 6, a week before Kim's death.
The Indonesian woman has told investigators that she was duped into thinking she was part of a comedy show prank.
The case has raised tensions between Malaysia and North Korea. In a Monday statement, Malaysia's Foreign Ministry said it had recalled its ambassador to North Korea "for consultations" and that it had summoned Kang Chol, North Korea's ambassador to Kuala Lumpur, "to seek an explanation on the accusations he made against the Government of Malaysia."
Pyongyang had demanded custody of Kim's body and strongly objected to an autopsy, but the Malaysians went ahead with the procedure.
"We are investigating a case of murder ... we just follow our rules and regulations," Rashid said.
Kang said Malaysia may be "trying to conceal something" and that the autopsy was carried out "unilaterally and excluding our attendance."
The statement called Kang's comments "baseless," adding it "takes very seriously any unfounded attempt to tarnish its reputation."
"Given various information we have and the circumstances, our government is certain that the man murdered was Kim Jong Nam," said Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman for the South's Unification Ministry, at a news briefing after Rashid identified the North Korean suspects by name.
He added that because multiple suspects are from North Korea, his country believes that North Korea "masterminded" Kim's death.
Information for this article was contributed by Eileen Ng and Hyung-jin Kim of The Associated Press, and by Richard C. Paddock and Choe Sang-hun of The New York Times.
A Section on 02/20/2017