“We’re still not out of the woods,’’ Dr Colin D’Cunha, Ontario’s Commissioner of Public Health, told a news conference yesterday in Toronto, the country’s largest city. “The increase in the number of cases is not a surprise.”

Dr D’Cunha did not identify the latest victim but officials said five of the eight deaths were people in their 70s.

The health authorities said there were now 163 probable and suspect cases of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in the province, up from a previous 149.

Canada has the third highest number of SARS cases in the world, the bulk of them in and around Toronto. The pneumonia-like disease is believed to have originated in China’s southern Guangdong province.

The virus has been spread by travellers and infected 2,500 persons worldwide and killed almost 90 persons, with 49 deaths and 1,220 cases in China.

Toronto has a large Chinese immigrant population and local business people in the city’s bustling Chinatown have complained that people are avoiding the area because they associate SARS with the Asian community.

Thousands of people have been quarantined in Ontario to prevent the spread of the virus, while hospitals in Toronto have been operating under a Code Orange and offering essential services only to patients needing urgent medical attention.

Health officials say the city remains a healthy and safe travel destination, but a convention of medical specialists set for this weekend was cancelled late last week.

Ontario health officials said 31 patients had been treated for SARS and discharged from hospitals.

HONG KONG: A man who refused treatment for SARS was locked in a 14-hour standoff with the Hong Kong police before agreeing to go to a hospital on Sunday, the police said.

Dozens of wooden coffins piled up in places and plastic bags full of bones filled one building in the rundown military complex near Iraq’s second city of Basra, said correspondents with British forces.

The Arab television news channel Al-Jazeera quoted an unnamed Iraqi official yesterday in Basra as saying the remains were those of Iraqi soldiers killed in the 1980-88 war with Iran and recently repatriated by Tehran.

The official said the start of the US-led war prevented the authorities from returning the bodies to their families.

Although the Iran-Iraq war, which cost an estimated one million lives, ended 15 years ago, the two countries still exchange bodies and prisoners of war. The latest prisoner swap ended on March 19, a day before the start of the current war.

In a cargo container near the coffins, British soldiers found scrapbooks stuffed with faded photographs of corpses, most of which appeared to have gunshot wounds to the head.

Vanessa Allen, a correspondent with Britain’s Press Association, reported that some of the faces had been burnt, mutilated or scarred by horrific wounds.

“Bloody hell, these are all executions,” Captain Jack Kemp was quoted as saying by the Press Association as he leafed through the gory photographs. It was not clear if the pictures were connected to the nearby remains.

US and British officials have indicated that they are preparing to try Iraqi leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity and have dispatched investigators to hunt for evidence.

The warehouse near Basra was placed out of bounds yesterday and experts were called in to examine the site.

“They are going to treat it as a war grave. They have sealed the area off and are waiting for forensic teams to go in and see what happened,” said a British military spokeswoman at the war headquarters in Qatar.

It was not immediately clear how long the remains had been in the building, but initial indications suggested that the persons might have died several years ago.

The region has been the scene of fierce fighting over the past two decades, with heavy casualties chalked up in the Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Gulf War and the Shi’ite Muslim uprising that followed Iraq’s defeat in Kuwait.

Bundles of bones and scraps of military uniforms were visible inside the plastic bags yesterday.

A bloodstained identity card showed the photo of a young man. The teeth in some of the skulls were missing.

Outside the warehouse was a wall dotted with a spray of bullet holes, most at head height. Tiny concrete cells were discovered nearby.

Paul Harris, a correspondent with Britain’s Observer newspaper, said portraits of Saddam stared down from some of the grey walls. In several rusting metal hooks dangled from iron poles embedded in the ceiling.

Human rights organisations and critics of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said his security forces regularly killed opponents and their families, often recording the evidence and circulating it as a way of maintaining his grip on the country.

The erstwhile defenders of freedom and democracy are now more likely to be viewed by their allies around the world as war-mongering imperialists, bad cops and bullies who lost their way by brushing aside the United Nations and attacking Iraq.

At home, President George W. Bush’s popularity has soared over his handling of the war with Iraq. But opinion polls in countries that have long been reliable US supporters show steep erosions in the popularity of the USA.

From Germany to South Korea, millions of protesters have denounced Bush and the war to oust President Saddam Hussein.

Even in the UK, Washington’s staunchest ally and military partner in the Iraq campaign, half the population opposes the war and anti-American sentiment is growing, with only one in seven trusting Bush to tell the truth, according to a poll last week. In many other nations, huge majorities oppose the war and surveys show growing criticism of the USA.

Anti-US sentiment has grown so high that a poll in France for the Le Monde newspaper last week showed one-third did not want the USA to win the war. One-fourth were on Iraq’s side.

There have also been boycotts of US goods. Many say the USA’s long-standing image in many parts of the world as a benevolent force and stabilising factor has suffered.

‘’Bush has caused long-term damage to the good reputation of America,’’ said Dietmar Herz, a political scientist at Erfurt University. ‘’Even many who had been pro-America talk about the USA as ‘aggressors’ and ‘invaders’. There is a lot of anger. The anti-America mood has not been so high since Vietnam.’’

The change in climate can be felt almost everywhere, but is especially striking in places like Berlin, where Americans enjoyed a special status because of the 1948-49 airlift that kept West Berlin free in the midst of communist East Germany.

Millions of cheering Berliners turned out in 1994 for tickertape parades for US soldiers going home after the end of the Cold War. Now armed guards and armoured vehicles seal a whole city block to protect the US embassy in central Berlin.

Half a million persons took part in a recent Berlin peace rally, the largest gathering in post-war German history. Many criticised what they called Rambo-like US lust for war.

“Those in Washington who dream about themselves being the new Rome and that the world will dance to their tune are out of touch with reality,” said former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in a rare swipe at the USA. Nearly nine out of 10 Germans said they lost their respect for the USA over Iraq, according to a Forsa opinion poll. Another found nearly 50 per cent believe Bush was a “warmonger”. Even many who defended the USA during US-bashing in Europe in past decades said they were appalled now.

“I am shocked and so disappointed by the USA,” said Gertrude Pawelka, a retired teacher in Austria. ‘’I never thought they would start a war of aggression. I liked America, it was always for justice. It scares me now the way it is whipping up hatred,” he said.

“We cannot waste our resources on a war that is wrong, that is illegal,” said Lee, a California Democrat, who was thrust into the spotlight last year when she cast the lone House vote against going to war with Iraq.

“Peace is patriotic,” Lee told the crowd yesterday, urging them to continue speaking out against the war and to vote.

It was the most passionate and largest of a series of protests in several major US cities yesterday.

In Chicago, roughly 1,000 people — and about as many police — gathered in bitter near-freezing weather in the city’s federal plaza, while about 100 people in Washington D.C. attended a peace vigil on the National Mall.

DHAKA: Protests against the US-led attack continued unabated in Bangladesh with nearly 10,000 war veterans signing up to fight in Baghdad.

The chairman of Bangladesh Muktijoddha Sangsad (BMS) Ahad Chowdhury told an anti-war rally here yesterday that some 10,000 of its members have decided to go to Iraq to fight guerrilla war alongside Iraqis against the allied forces.

The BMS, is a body of war veterans and most of them are guerrilla fighters, he said. Agencies

“Tribal leader Amanullah, together with four of his friends, was killed and three others injured on Friday in a tribal dispute in Zerok district of the Paktika province,” said Deputy Provincial Governor Sadoo Khan.

“We are now on our way to Zerok district where a tribal shura (council) is set up to assess the situation. According to tradition, issues relating to tribes get solved in tribal shuras,” the Deputy Governor told AFP by telephone.

No details were available on the cause of the dispute.

After 23 years of war, weapons are readily available and it is not uncommon for tribal disputes to turn violent.

Witnesses said Avery was hit by an apparent Ricochet bullet from an Israeli armoured vehicle while in the streets of the West Bank city of Jenin during a curfew. Israeli military sources said the armoured vehicle was exchanging fire with a Palestinian gunman.

The sources said Avery was in a critical condition and had been put into intensive care at an Israeli hospital.

The latest bloodshed in a 30-month-old Palestinian uprising for an independent state came as US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair prepared to meet next week to discuss reviving the West Asia peace process.

Washington has been anxious to see a reduction in Israeli-Palestinian violence while it wages war in Iraq in an effort to oust President Saddam Hussein amid widespread disquiet in the Muslim world.

Tobia Karlsson, a colleague from the International Solidarity Movement to Protect the Palestinian People, whose supporters act as ‘’human shields’’ in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said he was standing next to Avery at the time.