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| Saturday, March 17, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Commandos storm plane, free hostages; 3 killed Dubai, March 16 Three persons, including one of the hijackers of a Russian plane, were killed and two injured when Saudi commandos stormed the aircraft and freed over 100 people held hostage by three armed Chechen rebels, ending nearly a 23-hour drama at the Medina airport today. Blasts kill 18 in N. China city Pak allows militant outfits to raise funds Pak no to interim democracy |
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Omar orders 100 cows slaughtered for delay Suva, March 16 Fiji’s President reappointed its caretaker Prime Minister today, who immediately pledged to hold democratic elections to restore the Pacific country to constitutional rule for the first time since a nationalist coup in May 2000. China ‘sets up’ second missile base
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Commandos storm plane, free hostages; 3 killed Dubai, March 16 “A stewardess, a terrorist, apparently the youngest of the three, and a Turkish passenger were killed in the operation which was conducted upon approval from the Russian authorities,” top Russian spokesman on Chechnya, Sergei Yastzhembsky, said in Moscow. The hijackers killed the stewardess when commandos raided the plane. The commandos retaliated, killing one of the hijackers, sources at the Medina airport said. The Turkish passenger, who was wounded in the operation, succumbed to injuries, the sources said, adding another airhostess and a hijacker were also injured in the raid. A unit of the Saudi anti-terrorist force raided the plane and freed the hostages in a quick operation, the SPA quoting an Interior Ministry spokesman reported. The hijacking drama began nearly 30 minutes after the Russian TU-154 plane with 174, including 12 crew members, took off from the Istanbul airport in Turkey en route to Moscow last evening. The three hijackers said to be carrying knives and a bomb-like object forced the plane to land at the Medina airport where it was immediately surrounded by Saudi forces. About six ambulances and fire engines surrounded the plane, which was parked in an isolated area on the tarmac at Medina airport. Saudi officials said the hijackers had earlier asked to fly to Afghanistan. The Russian Itar-Tass news agency quoted unnamed Russian sources as saying the hijackers asked for an air corridor to either Kabul or Kandahar. The hijackers identified themselves as rebels from the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya, officials said. The official Chechen website said Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov denied that his government was responsible. At one point during the flight, a fight between the hijackers and a passenger at the entrance to the cockpit sent the plane on a terrifying plunge of 400 metres, Turkish Transport Minister Enis Oksuz said. He said the pilot managed to stabilise the plane. The plane eventually arrived in Medina, a city filled with Muslim pilgrims heading home after the annual Haj pilgrimage. The pilots immediately locked themselves inside the cockpit. Ali Abbas, a doctor at Medina’s King Fahd Hospital, said four Turks, plus a Russian crew member who was stabbed in a scuffle with the hijackers, were hospitalised.
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Blasts kill 18 in N. China city Beijing, March 16 The most powerful blast flattened a five-storey building housing workers in No 3 Cotton Mill. An estimated 35 families lived in the block. Local newspaper reporters said they were certain the death toll was much higher than reported by Xinhua. Resident living near the Number 3 Cotton Mill said he was jolted awake by the huge explosion on Friday. “My whole bed was shaking,” he told newsmen. Resident living near the No 3 Cotton Mill said he was jolted awake by the huge explosion on Friday. “My whole bed was shaking,” he told newsmen. A Xinhua photograph showed rescue workers clambering over a pile of rubble. There was no word on what caused the explosions, which occurred almost simultaneously sometime after 4 a.m. (8 pm GMT Thursday) in the capital of Hebei province 250 km ) southwest of Beijing. Residents said rumours were circulating that disgruntled workers laid off by state firms were responsible. The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, which has an extensive intelligence network in China, said an estimated 170 people lived in the building. It estimated the death toll from all four explosions could reach 200. Another two blasts were also in blocks near state-owned cotton mills and a fourth was near a university, according to local officials and witnesses. Residents said riot police were patrolling areas around the blast sites and streets were sealed off. “The atmosphere in the city is tense,” said one official. He said all government departments held emergency meetings this morning “to instruct staff to pay more attention to safety”. One blast blew a hole in the side of a dormitory near No 1 Cotton Mill. The fourth explosion damaged a dormitory near the Hebei Provincial Television and Broadcasting University, a university official said. He said the building did not belong to the college. Shijiazhuang, population 1.3 million, is a centre of China’s declining cotton textile industry, a focus of Beijing’s industrial restructuring that has led to millions of job losses around the country. In September, the city was rocked by a series of explosions in shops and on public buses caused by crude time bombs planted by a man who was later arrested and sentenced to death, according to state media reports. Those explosions wounded 28 people, state media reported. Yesterday, Chinese premier Zhu Rongji apologised to the nation over a deadly school blast but said his own investigation found no evidence pupils were making fireworks. It was a rare public apology by a Chinese leader and followed more than a week of controversy over the explosion that killed at least 42 persons, mostly children, in a poor village in the eastern province of Jiangxi. An official investigation blamed a lone madman, but bereaved parents said children at the elementary school were forced to assemble firecrackers and the blast was caused by stored explosives.
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Pak allows militant outfits to raise funds Islamabad, March 16 “After prolonged negotiations with the government agencies, mainstream religious organisations, involved in armed struggle against Indian forces in Kashmir, have agreed to discreetly pursue their drive to collect donations and recruit volunteers,” The News said today. “In return, the government has decided not to pursue, too aggressively, its pledge to force the closure of all such activity,” it said. “The latest development has effectively reversed the dramatic announcement made by Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider, promising elimination of all such activities on February 13”, it said. The police and other law enforcing agencies had been told not to raid or use force against any Jihadi outfits following a series of closed-door meetings with the leaders of the groups, the report said. The decision to permit the Jihadi groups was taken after an “influential group” within the government prevailed on military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf that a “rash official action” might provoke an armed reaction from the Jihadi groups and might push Pakistan to an internal strife of the scale currently being witnessed in Algiers, Egypt and Tunis, the newspaper said. The report follows an official announcement yesterday that a new law has been framed to ban any religious organisation found involved in sectarian violence. But an official clarification that followed made it amply clear that the proposed ban would be confined only to extremist organisations involved in sectarian violence between the majority Sunni and minority Shia sects in Pakistan. “Though sections of the regime made a fine distinction, between the sectarian Sunni and Shia outfits that indulged in violence in Pakistan, it is the Jihadi organisations fighting in Kashmir that have registered a phenomenal growth in small and big towns in Pakistan,” The News said. Police records in Karachi show that in the last one year alone, Jaish-e-Mohammad, formed by Maulana Masood Azhar, Pakistani militant released from an Indian jail following hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane, has opened 135 contact points since last year to collect funds and recruit militants to fight Indian forces in Kashmir.
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Pak no to interim democracy Karachi, March 16 General Musharraf, speaking to a group of intellectuals and senior officials in the southern city of Karachi late on Thursday, ruled out any interim set-up for governing the country and said such rumours should be stopped, major Pakistani newspapers reported. “I keep reading about (an interim set-up) but there is nothing of the sort,’’ Gen Musharraf was quoted as saying. “We are not going to do anything in between and the Supreme Court decision will be adhered to.’’ The meeting was closed to foreign media. The Supreme Court last May gave General Musharraf three years from the date of the coup to complete his promised political, economic and administrative reforms and hand over charge to an elected civilian government. Pakistan’s two main political parties, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), have for the first time joined together to help form the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD), a grouping of 18 parties aiming to restore civilian rule. General Musharraf ruled out any cut in the defence spending despite a severe financial crisis gripping the country. “At this stage, we cannot reduce our defence budget because we are facing threats from enemy. However, Pakistan will not follow India, which has increased its defence budget by 14 per cent,” General Musharraf said.
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Omar orders 100 cows slaughtered for delay Kabul, March 16 In a broadcast monitored in the Afghan capital, Mullah Mohammed Omar said the cows would be killed and the meat distributed among the country’s poor and hungry on March 19. The cows will be killed “because of the delay in destroying the idols”, the radio broadcast said, quoting a statement by Omar. The two giant statues of Buddha, hewn from a cliff face in central Bamiyan in the third and fifth centuries, were demolished last week — almost two weeks after Omar ordered all statues in Afghanistan destroyed, saying that they were idolatrous and against Islam. There were initial reports that Taliban soldiers tried to destroy the mammoth statues, standing 51 metres and 36 metres with anti-aircraft weapons, cannons and rockets. Later, the Taliban reportedly moved truckloads of explosive material to the site and the statues were eventually felled by stuffing explosives into large holes bored into the statues. But the destruction was a protracted one and Omar called for the animal sacrifices to atone for that delay. The order comes barely a week after the Islamic festival of Eid-al-Adha, when devout Muslims sacrifice an animal, usually a sheep or a goat. According to Islamic tradition, one cow is equivalent to seven sheep.
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Qarase sworn
in Fiji PM Suva, March 16 Mr Qarase said he would stand in the elections for a seat in Parliament. Mr Qarase was a career civil servant before the army installed him as interim Prime Minister after the May 19 coup. Later today, Mr Qarase reinstalled all Cabinet members from his previous administration.
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China ‘sets up’ second missile base Washington, March 16 News of the new base, first disclosed in the Washington Times newspaper, appeared as the Bush administration was considering its annual arms sales list to Taiwan. President George W. Bush is due to meet China’s top foreign policy official, Vice-Premier Qian Qichen, in Washington next week for talks that are expected to feature Taiwan, considered a breakaway province by Beijing but given defence and other help by the USA. An administration official confirmed the newspaper report that China had established a second base near its coast for nearly 100 css-7 short-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Taiwan. Adm Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment directly as the report concerned intelligence matters. Admiral Quigley told a regular Pentagon briefing that while it was within China’s rights to increase its missile force, Washington hoped “the modernisation efforts they have under way are not destabilising to the region.” The Washington Times, which often publishes leaked information about Chinese military activities, reported in December, 1999, that construction had begun on the base near Xianyou, about 215 km from Taiwan.
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