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Thursday,
February 21, 2002, Chandigarh, India 
 
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Train catches fire in
Egypt: 373 killed
Nepal likely to extend emergency Pak shuts down ISI cell in Afghanistan Massive Israeli strikes leave 15 dead
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Mugabe ‘may lose’ poll
Bush for N. Korea’s return to
talks Lanka ex-minister held for massacre
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Train catches fire in Egypt:
373 killed Al Ayatt (Egypt), February 20 A fire official said rescue workers had counted 300 bodies pulled from the charred carriages of the train or retrieved them from the tracks, where some had landed after jumping from the windows of the moving train. A civil defence official, Lt Amin Karam, said he expected the toll to climb as police and recovery workers searched the charred train cars. “From how things are going, not less than 400 persons were killed,” Karam said. Firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze several hours after it engulfed seven carriages of the train just after midnight today near the town of Al-Ayatt. About 75 injured passengers were taken to a hospital. The official Middle East News Agency (MENA) said preliminary investigations showed the fire started when a gas cylinder exploded in the train’s cafe. Passengers jumped out of windows and doors to escape the flames and smoke as the train rolled on for another 8 km (five miles) after the fire started, security sources said. “We pushed each other and we were suffocating from the smoke. We threw each other out the windows,” one survivor said from his hospital bed. Witnesses said bars on the windows of the carriages may have prevented some people from escaping. A charred body was found wedged between the bars in one of the windows. Inside the train, bodies were piled up at the far ends of two carriages, where the victims had apparently sought to escape the blaze. The bodies were burnt beyond recognition. The train had been heading south from Cairo to Luxor in the south of the country. The sources said all dead were believed to be Egyptians. Witnesses said the train was overcrowded with people heading for the countryside to spend the Muslim Id al-Adha holiday with families. The train was an old, slow-moving model used mostly by poor Egyptians. Rescue workers struggled to remove bodies from about seven carriages. Ashes filled the burnt, blackened carriages. MENA said Giza Governor Mahmoud Abou al-Leil had gone to the scene accompanied by several Interior Ministry and security officials. The death toll would be Egypt’s highest in a trsain disaster since a collision in 1995 killed 75 persons. Passengers are often packed into cramped compartments like cattle. In some trains, people take small animals into the carriages. Compartments also are stuffed with luggage for long-haul journeys.
Reuters, AFP |
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Nepal likely to extend emergency Kathmandu, February 20 “It is likely that the emergency will be extended. There is no alternative,” Panna Kaji Amatya, professor of political science at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan University, said. The debate on the motion follows weekend attacks in west Nepal that killed 167 people, including 13 guerrillas. The emergency, imposed after the rebels broke a truce and launched a string of bloody attacks on security posts in November, will expire unless a two-thirds majority of the 205-member lower house approves an extension before Saturday. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has sought parliamentary support for the emergency under which the army was ordered for the first time into action against the rebels. He has warned the situation could “worsen drastically” if the emergency giving the army sweeping search and detention powers was not renewed. The main opposition Communist Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML) party has said it could back the motion if Deuba agreed to electoral reforms to end what it says are voting abuses. Meanwhile, the recent Maoist attack in which some 140 people were killed in Nepal could have been averted had the government paid heed to reports from district authorities urging caution, a leading newspaper said today. The Kathmandu Post reported that the biggest and bloodiest Maoist attack in the mid-western Nepalese district of Achham on February 17 could have been averted had the government paid heed to the need for caution from authorities in the district. Achham chief district officer (CDO) Mohan Singh Khatri, who died in Sunday’s attack, had indicated a possible attack by Maoists rebels, the daily quoted a senior Opposition leader from the district as saying. Maoists also destroyed almost all major government offices and looted about Rs.20 million from a local bank in the biggest attack since the Maoists launched the “people’s war” six years ago.
Reuters, IANS |
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Pak shuts down ISI cell in Afghanistan New York, February 20 “The Afghanistan cell has been closed down and the Kashmir cell has been reduced to an intelligence-gathering detachment,” a Pakistani military intelligence official was today quoted as saying by the New York Times. “Senior officers of the two cells have already been repatriated to their parent units while others are under transfer or are being ordered to return to other military units,” it said.
PTI |
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Massive Israeli strikes leave 15 dead
Jerusalem/Gaza City, February 20 Eight Palestinians were killed in the northern West Bank city of Nablus, six of them by Israeli shelling and two, including a youth, died in clashes with Israeli soldiers. In Ramallah, a security man was killed at a Palestinian outpost, and the second one died as a result of the Israeli shelling. In a pre-dawn raid today, Israeli army F-16 warplanes, Apache helicopters and naval boats attacked Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s beachside Gaza City headquarters, killing at least five Palestinians from the elite Force 17 unit, and wounding 10 others, Palestinian witnesses said. Israel also attacked Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Gaza office, and Palestinians said Israeli troops also rocketed the Ramallah compound housing the Palestinian leader’s Ramallah bureau. Mr Arafat, currently under tight Israeli siege in Ramallah, was unharmed. Meanwhile, Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon met his security Cabinet to discuss further the Israeli responses to the latest escalation in violence in the region, which has killed 10 Israelis and 27 Palestinians, including three suicide bombers, since late Monday afternoon. According to Israel Radio, Mr Sharon met Israeli defence chiefs last night, and decided to intensify Israel’s retaliations for Palestinian attacks.
DPA |
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Mugabe ‘may lose’ poll Harare, February 20 Nearly 20 per cent of the 1,693 people surveyed in rural and urban areas by the university-based Mass Public Opinion Institute said they would vote for opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, as against 11 per cent for Mugabe. In a sign of rising tensions ahead of the March 9-10 presidential election, nearly 60 per cent refused to say how they would vote. The results were published in the independent Daily News. Meanwhile, the USA said on Tuesday it strongly supported EU sanctions and was preparing a similar package to limit U.S. travel by Zimbabwe’s leaders. “We’ve been working through this process to implement targeted travel sanctions that focus on the individuals responsible for, or who benefit from, politics that undermine Zimbabwe’s democratic institutions,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. The USA, like the European Union, has been strongly critical of Mugabe’s restrictions on the media and of intimidation of the opposition by his supporters. But Commonwealth leaders meeting in Australia next month were expected to hold off taking any action against Zimbabwe until after the election, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said. “There is no point trying to pretend that people (in Zimbabwe) aren’t being intimidated into voting for the government and that is entirely unacceptable and contrary to the principles of the Commonwealth,” Downer told newsmen. Zimbabwe slams “economic terrorism” Analysts said the EU sanctions underlined how isolated Mugabe and his top aides had become but added that in public the veteran leader would brandish the penalty as a badge of honour. The EU travel ban affects families of the leadership, including children studying at schools in EU countries. Zimbabwe has called the measures “economic terrorism”.
Reuters |
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Bush for N. Korea’s return to talks Seoul, February 20 But Mr Bush urged the North’s leadership to return to the negotiating table, gave support for President Kim’s “sunshine policy” of engagement with the prickly Communist state and pledged that the USA would not invade the North. Mr Bush and Mr Kim extended their one-to-one summit from one hour to almost two in a sign of the importance now being given to North Korea during Mr Bush’s three-nation Asian tour. Mr Bush has repeatedly attacked North Korean leader Kim Jong-II in recent weeks saying that his country was part of “an axis of evil” with Iran and Iraq because it was spreading weapons of mass destruction. “I will not change my opinion of Kim Jong-II until he frees his people and accepts genuine proposals (for peace) from countries like South Korea,” Mr Bush told a press conference with Mr Kim after their summit. Mr Bush said the USA would continue to give substantial food aid to the North. The USA is the largest single contributor to North Korea where more than a million persons have died from starvation and related disease since 1995. “We have great sympathy and empathy with North Korean people. We want them to have food and at the same time, we want them to have freedom and we will work in a peaceful way to achieve that objective.” President Kim only expressed satisfaction at the outcome of the summit. But he said Mr Bush had agreed to confront North Korea’s missile programme and weapons of mass destruction through “dialogue.” Mr Bush said today he would raise the issue of religious freedom in China on the last leg of his three-nation tour of Asia. The issue has been a major sticking point in US ties with Beijing’s atheist leadership. Meanwhile, a North Korean soldier crossed the heavily fortified border with the rival South to defect hours before Mr Bush visited the spot today, officials said. South Korean Defence Ministry officials said the Korean People’s Army corporal had been unaware that Mr Bush would be visiting Dorasan, a railway station on the edge of the South Korean side of the de-militarised zone.
AFP, Reuters |
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Lanka ex-minister held for massacre
Colombo, February 20 General Ratwatte, President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s uncle, was arrested at his residence here last night after the Attorney-General ruled that there was enough evidence to link him to the killing of 10 supporters of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress near the central hill town of Kandy. He was produced before a magistrate near Kandy today and remanded till March 4, the police said. He was brought back to Colombo but it is not clear where he will be detained. The People’s Alliance strongman was interrogated on February 9 for several hours by CID officers, but he denied any knowledge about the killing. General Ratwatte is likely to be indicted on conspiracy charges. Two of his sons, Lohan and Chanuka, are at large for over two months. Thirty-one suspects, most of them army personnel, are already in custody. Some of them surrendered in a court in December. Eyewitnesses had told the police that the killers, who were in military uniform, had pumped hundreds of bullets from assault rifles into a packed van, apparently as punishment for preventing large-scale rigging during the elections. General Ratwatte, a senior leader of Ms Kumaratunga’s People’s Alliance and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party which heads it, was accused by his detractors of unleashing terror in Kandy during the elections. A retired Lieutenant Colonel, Ratwatte had been conferred the rank of General by the President after the army regained control of Jaffna in 1995 when he was Deputy Defence Minister. However, since then, his opponents have sought his resignation in vain for a series of military debacles and security lapses, the latest being the failure to defend the country’s main air force base near Colombo airport from LTTE attack last July.
PTI |
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Sept 11 attacks: 7
women file suit Washington, February 20 Those named in the suit, filed yesterday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, include accused terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, his Al-Qaida network, Afghanistan’s former Taliban rulers and the estates of the 19 terrorist hijackers. The action seeks at least $100 billion in total damages. “We intend to bankrupt them,” lead attorney Thomas Mellon said.
AP |
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