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Tuesday,
January 29, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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US forces storm hospital,
6 Arab gunmen killed
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| Over 500 die in stampede after blast Lagos, January 28 More than 580 bodies were pulled from a Lagos canal early today after a massive crowd stampeded as it fled a huge arms dump explosion in the city, a distraught witness told AFP. How was Masood assassinated? Palestinian shot dead
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US forces storm hospital,
6 Arab gunmen killed Kandahar, January 28 All but one of the gunmen, believed to have numbered five or six, were killed, Afghan fighters loyal to Kandahar Governor Gul Agha said. The building was stormed after the gunmen, most of whom were believed to be Arabs, rejected a surrender ultimatum today, the Afghans said. A fire broke out during the operation and black smoke poured from the building, a wing of the hospital that was cleared out weeks ago except for the fighters. A series of six explosions were heard about nine hours after the attack began. American and Afghan forces moved into the walled Mir Wais Hospital compound before dawn, supported by helicopters. “The Arabs saw them, and they started firing,” said Najabullah, an Afghan commander, briefing Kandahar government officials. Two loud explosions and automatic weapons fire rocked the compound as the raid was launched. Najabullah said the besieged men had hurled grenades. A much louder explosion was heard more than five hours later and fire broke out. US sharpshooters were seen on ledges of the second storey, where the gunmen had been holed up. Witnesses said a man wearing Afghan clothes climbed in through one window, possibly to assess if anyone was left inside. The raid was conducted at the request of Afghan authorities, and US troops assisted local soldiers, said Major A.C. Roper, an Army spokesman at the US base at Kandahar airport. Hospital officials ordered food and water cut off two weeks ago to starve them out. There were conflicting reports whether staff had carried the order out, but the men were believed to have stockpiled food and water. However, Mr Khalid Pashtoon, another spokesman, said all six fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden were killed when Afghan forces and US advisers stormed the hospital. “Six Arabs are dead. We gave them an ultimatum. They would not talk, they would not negotiate. They were fighting till the last moment.
AP, Reuters |
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Differences
in US Govt over Taliban prisoners’ status Washington, January 28 Appearing on CNN last night, Mr Cheney said the Al-Qaida captives detained in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba would not get the status of PoWs irrespective of the decision that the administration might take on the request of Mr Powell to review how the convention could apply to them. He suggested that the State Department’s view that the captives should be treated within the confines of the convention would be rejected. Even at the height of the US operations in Afghanistan, Mr Powell and Mr Rumsfeld had different view on continuing the war during Ramzan. Mr Rumsfeld, who visited the Cuban camp yesterday, said these prisoners were not combatants of an army in uniform. They were unlawful combatants and terrorists and hence they were detainees. Mr Cheney said, “There is a category under the convention for unlawful combatants, and one argument, the state department argument, is they ought to be treated within the convention.” The other argument, he said, “is the convention doesn’t apply in the case of terrorism, and that leads you down a different track from a legal standpoint.” “The ultimate result is they will be treated humanely, but they are not going to be accorded the treatment you would accord, for example, the Iraqis that we captured in the Gulf war, who were treated - a prisoner of war, for example, has to give only name, rank and serial number.” ‘The New York Times’ said Mr Powell agreed that the captives should not be given prisoner-of-war status but wanted the administration to reconsider whether to adhere to the convention governing treatment of prisoners in wartime. But in the television interview, Mr Cheney rejected application of the convention to them, saying it did not apply as they were not conventional soldiers but terrorists operating outside internationally accepted norms. The question, he said, was whether the prisoners should be treated within the confines of the convention or outside it. “He prefers the latter course because it will allow flexibility in interrogation,” he added. “There’s another school of thought that says the convention does not apply to terrorist attacks. It was set up to deal with a war between sovereign states. It’s got provisions for dealing with civil war. But in a case where you have non-state actors out to kill civilians, then there’s a serious question whether or not the convention even applies,” Mr Cheney said. “The detainees are being treated humanely. These are the worst of a very bad lot. They are very dangerous. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans, innocent Americans, if they can, and they are perfectly prepared to die in the effort.” Mr Rumsfeld, who visited the Guantanamo, later told reporters that there is no ambiguity. They are PoWs and “they will not be determined to be PoWs.” As many as 158 prisoners are being held in Guantanamo. The issue of application of the convention has arisen following sharp criticism by human rights groups about the treatment of the captives. He, however, said the 158 captured Al-Qaida and Taliban fighters were treated well, given medical attention and three meals a day, meals approved for observant Muslims. More permanent facilities would be built for them, he said.
PTI |
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Over 500 die in stampede after blast Lagos, January 28 “I have counted more than 580 (bodies). I am looking for my children. I have been here since the morning,” said Shola Odun, a printer. “They have been pulling the bodies out of here since first thing. They are taking them away. I am looking for my children, my relatives: there are more than 580 bodies. One man here lost six of his children. He found them. He is dying,” Odun added. Black Africa’s most densely inhabited city — home to more than 10 million people — was shaken repeatedly late yesterday by the massive explosions, set off by a fire at a military armoury. A photographer at the scene said he had witnessed more than 140 bodies being pulled from the water in the canal in Isolo district during the time he was at the site, close to the area where the arms explosion happened. Earlier, another witness said he had seen 59 bodies pulled out of the canal at a place called Okiafa. Lagos State Information Commissioner Dele Alake said the state Governor, Bola Tinubu, was due at the scene shortly. “We have had the reports of the drowning. It seems there was a stampede last night. Earlier, at least 12 persons were killed in a fire and subsequent explosions at an army an munitions dump in Lagos, local journalists said. Bodies were scattered around a military barracks in the Lagos suburb of Ikeja, the journalists said. The blast destroyed at least 10 buildings and dozens of vehicles at the military depot, devastated a nearby church and damaged a hospital, BBC reported. Lagos State Governor denied that the blasts had anything to do with a coup attempt and said President Olusegun Obasanjo was safe.
AFP, DPA |
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How was Masood assassinated? Kabul, January 28 Journalist and filmmaker Fahim Dashti claims, in the Kabul weekly newspaper he just relaunched, he was present in the room in northern Afghanistan where Masood was targeted by two Arab suicide bombers posing as television journalists. An anti-Soviet resistance hero, Masood was killed two days before the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Dashti writes in the first edition of the Independent weekly since the Taliban closed it down in 1996 that the Arabs appeared to be “very gentle”. One was tall and wore glasses while the other was of medium height and had athletic limbs and a hard face. Dashti writes that the assassins were Morrocans who had Belgian citizenship. Masood had asked the Arabs to read the questions to him before the start of the actual interview. One of the Arabs, named Karim, started reading the questions in English as Masood Khalili, Afghanistan’s ambassador to New Delhi, translated for Masood. The other “journalist”, named Qasim, prepared the camera. Karim’s 14 or 15 questions had mainly focused on the situation at the time in Afghanistan, such as the military conflict with the Taliban, relations with Pakistan, the Taliban and alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden who was being harboured by the Islamic militia. Dashti writes that after 15 or 20 seconds”, he heard an explosion which caused him to close his eyes, but he still experienced a brilliant light. “For one moment” he had thought something was wrong with his own camera. The heat, he said, caused him to run out of the room. Dashti writes that after returning to the room he had found it full of dust and smoke. Doors were wrecked and all the windows broken. “That was the time I learnt about the scale of explosion,” he said. He saw Masood for the last time when he was taken out of the helicopter and to hospital in the Tajik border town of Farkhar.
AFP |
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Palestinian shot dead Ramat Gan (Israel), January 28 The police was unable
immediately to confirm reports by Israel’s Army Radio that the man was Palestinian and had opened fire on passersby, wounding one. Ambulances rushed to the scene on the edge of Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv. “A driver in a car who had apparently broken through a roadblock reached Ramat Gan”, police spokesman Gil Kleiman said. “He ran over a policeman and dragged him several metres. Policeman from a nearby police station ran out and shot him”.
Reuters |
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