W O R L D

‘Secret agent shot dead Gaddafi on Sarkozy’s order’
London, October 1
A French secret serviceman shot dead Libya's former strongman Col Muammar Gaddafi and not a lynch mob of rebels as he lay trapped and cornered in a sewage pipe in his home town of Sirte.

3 NATO troops among 20 killed in Afghan attack
Khost, October 1
A suicide bomber tore through an Afghan-NATO foot patrol in a crowded city today, killing at least 20 persons, including three foreign troops and their interpreter, officials said.

An Afghan policeman inspects the scene of a suicide bomb attack in Khost province on Monday. — Reuters

‘Secret agent shot dead Gaddafi on Sarkozy’s order’

London, October 1
A French secret serviceman shot dead Libya's former strongman Col Muammar Gaddafi and not a lynch mob of rebels as he lay trapped and cornered in a sewage pipe in his home town of Sirte.

The French secret agent is said to have infiltrated a violent mob which had encircled the Libyan leader on October 20, 2011, in a sewage pipe in his home town, and shot him in the head, the Daily Mail reported.

Quoting diplomatic sources in the North African capital, the Mail said the motive apparently was to stop Gaddafi being interrogated about his highly suspicious links with Nicolas Sarkozy, who was the President of France at that time.

The paper said Sarkozy who once welcomed Gaddafi as the "Brother leader" during a state visit to Paris was said to have received millions of dollars from the Libyan despot to fund his election campaign in 2007.

Sarkozy, the paper said, was not the only Western leader to have close links with Gaddafi and claimed that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Gaddafi regularly and was helping to facilitate multi-billion pounds business deals.

Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra also reported that the French agent was acting on the express orders of Sarkozy.

"Since the beginning of NATO support for the revolution, strongly backed by the government of Nicolas Sarkozy, Gaddafi openly threatened to reveal details of his relationship with the former President of France, including the millions of dollars paid to finance his candidacy at the 2007 elections," the paper said.

The reports of involvement of French agents in the death of Gaddafi were corroborated by Mahmoud Jibril, who led the interim government in Libya after the ouster of Gaddafi.

Jibril told an Egyptian TV that "it was a foreign agent who mixed with the revolutionary brigades to kill Gaddafi." The Daily Mail quoted diplomatic sources in Tripoli as saying "Sarkozy had every reason to try to silence the Colonel and as quickly as possible."

The new revelations said that Gaddafi had been tracked through his satellite telecommunications system as he talked to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

NATO experts were able to trace the communications traffic between the two Arab leaders, and so pinpoint Gaddafi to the city of Sirte, where he was murdered on October 20.

NATO jets shot up Gaddafi's convoy, before rebels on the ground dragged Gaddafi from a drain where he was hiding and then subjected him to a violent attack which was videoed.

In another sinister twist to the story, a 22-year-old who was among the group which attacked Gaddafi and who frequently brandished the gun said to have killed him, died in Paris last Monday.

Ben Omran Shaaban was said to have been beaten up by Gaddafi loyalists in July, before being shot twice. He was flown to France for treatment, but died of his injuries.

Sarkozy, who lost the presidential election in May, has continually denied receiving money from Gaddafi. — PTI

UNHOLY ALLIANCE: A report says that the motive to kill Muammar Gaddafi (R) was to stop him from being interrogated about his suspicious links with Nicolas Sarkozy, who was the President of France at that time.

3 NATO troops among 20 killed in Afghan attack
Taliban claim responsibility 10 civilians among victims

Khost, October 1
A suicide bomber tore through an Afghan-NATO foot patrol in a crowded city today, killing at least 20 persons, including three foreign troops and their interpreter, officials said.

Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack near a market in the eastern city of Khost. Six Afghan policemen and 10 civilians were also killed, and 62 were wounded, provincial Governor's spokesman Baryalai Rawan, told AFP. Authorities had earlier given a death toll of four Afghan police and six civilians.

"Today at around 8:30 am (0930 IST) a suicide bomber on a motorcycle targeted a joint patrol in Khost city in a crowded area," the Governor's office said.

NATO's US-led International Security Assistance Force confirmed that three NATO service members and an ISAF-contracted interpreter had been killed in the attack.

The Taliban Islamists said on their website that the suicide attack was carried out by "a hero mujahid, Shohaib, from Kunduz", claiming that eight foreigners and six Afghan soldiers were killed.

The deaths take coalition casualties to at least 347 this year, according to an AFP tally. NATO has more than 100,000 troops fighting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, but they are due to pull out by the end of 2014.

Joint NATO-Afghan operations had been temporarily restricted last month after a spike in insider attacks, in which Afghan security forces turned their weapons against their coalition allies.

NATO says that overall insurgent attacks on its forces dropped by five percent in the first eight months of this year compared to 2011, but are still running at about 100 a day. — AFP 

Blasphemy Case
Two witnesses turn hostile 
Afzal Khan in Islamabad

(With inputs from PTI)

30% Brit kids clueless about Shakespeare

London, October 1
Three in ten schoolchildren below the age of 13 do not know who William Shakespeare is, a new survey has revealed. Hundreds of pupils from across the country took part in a study to discover whether they knew of the playwright.

The survey, which involved 1,000 pupils aged between six and 12, revealed that 30 percent are unaware of the country's most celebrated writer, the Daily Express reported. The researchers also found that around a quarter of adults (27 percent) have never read a play by Shakespeare and around one in eight (12 percent) are unaware that he was a British playwright. — ANI

BRIEFLY

Nasheed refuses to appear before court; defies travel ban
Male: Defiant former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed on Monday refused to appear before a court in connection with an abuse of power case, forcing the postponement of the matter even as he set sail outside Male despite a travel ban. Sources said the reason for his absence was the decision of his party, Maldivian Democratic Party, to reject any charges filed through the Maldivian courts until the judicial system was reformed as recommended by some international agencies. — PTI

Historian Eric Hobsbawm dead
London: Eric Hobsbawm, one of the most eminent British historians who closely followed the fluctuating fortunes of the Left movement in India and influenced many Indian scholars over decades, died here on Monday at the age of 95. Hobsbawm's works included the widely read and referenced books on world history, titled 'The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848', 'The Age of Capital; 1848- 1875', 'The Age of Empire: 1875-1914', and 'The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991'. — PTI

Indian among 7 die in Nepal landslide
Kathmandu: At least seven persons, including one Indian, were killed and seven others, six of them from Darjeeling, missing when a massive landslide triggered by heavy rain buried five vehicles on a highway in eastern Nepal, the police said today. Out of seven killed, only two have so far been identified as the bodies were badly mutilated, they said, adding among seven missing, six are from Darjeeling. — PTI