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nairobi Mall attack People look at a list of the Westgate mall attack victims outside a hospital in Nairobi on Tuesday. — AFP
Diplomacy on but Obama, Rouhani don’t meet
UN chemical weapons experts back in Syria
Ake Sellstrom, head of the UN chemical weapons investigation team, arrives in Damascus on
Wednesday. — AFP |
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Indian killed in Philippines ambush
Pak quake toll touches 350 ‘Quake island’ spews methane gas
Chinese street food vendor
executed, provokes outcry
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Kenya mourns; search on for siege victims
Nairobi, September 25 President Uhuru Kenyatta declared three days of mourning after troops defeated the Al-Qaida-linked al Shabaab group that targeted the upscale shopping centre popular with prosperous Kenyans and foreigners. The militants stormed the mall, known for its Western shops selling iPads and Nike shoes, in a hail of gunfire and grenades on Saturday lunchtime. The attack ended on Tuesday when Kenyan troops set off a series of explosions inside the building. Kenyatta said five militants and six security personnel were killed and 61 civilians had so far been confirmed dead but an unknown number of corpses are buried under the masonry. Three floors collapsed after the blasts and a separate fire weakened the structure of the vaulted, marble-tiled building. Al Shabaab, which said it launched the assault to demand the withdrawal of Kenyan troops fighting with African peacekeepers in Somalia, said hostages were killed when Kenyan troops used gas to clear to the mall. Officials dismissed this as “propaganda”. Kenyatta has said Kenyan forces would not quit Somalia. "We have ashamed and defeated our attackers," he said in a televised address on Tuesday. — Reuters
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Diplomacy on but Obama, Rouhani don’t meet
Washington, September 25 The official said that an offer in this regard was made by the US, which Iranian officials turned down saying it was "too complicated" for them at this point of time. "We did not have any plan for a formal bilateral meeting here. We indicated that the two leaders could have had a discussion on the margins if the opportunity presented itself. "The Iranians got back to us; it was clear that it was too complicated for them to do that at this time given their own dynamics back home," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters. However, US would continue with its direct talks with Iran through Secretary of State John Kerry as announced by Obama in his address to the UN General Assembly yesterday. "I am directing Kerry to pursue this effort with the Iranian Government in close cooperation with the European Union, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China," the President said. — PTI
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UN chemical weapons experts back in Syria
Damascus, September 25 The group, led by chief expert Ake Sellstrom, flew to Beirut in Lebanon and travelled by overland convoy via the Masnaa border post to Damascus. US President Barack Obama yesterday demanded tough Security Council action against Syria as the conflict there dominated debate at the annual UN General Assembly. Sellstrom's team is expected to examine the alleged use of chemical weapons some 14 times in Syria's 30-month conflict that is estimated to have killed more than 1,10,000 persons. After a preliminary visit last month, the team concluded in a report presented on September 16 that banned chemical weapons had been used on a wide scale in the conflict between Assad's regime and rebel forces. There was clear evidence that sarin gas was used in an attack in the Eastern Ghouta neighbourhood near Damascus on August 21, the report said. Sellstrom pointed out that the report was only an interim document, and that other allegations needed to be looked into. — AFP
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Indian killed in Philippines ambush
Manila, September 25 Jaswinder was rushed to a hospital in Batac City with multiple gunshot wounds while his cousin remained unharmed. The police are yet to determine the identity of the gunmen. In August, Ramandeep Singh Gill from Punjab was gunned down by unidentified men in the Philippines. — PTI |
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Islamabad, September 25
Official sources in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, said about 350 people were killed by the 7.7-magnitude quake, with a majority of deaths reported from the worst-hit Awaran district. Maj Gen Muhammad Saeed Aleem, head of the National Disaster Management Authority, told reporters in Quetta he had information of 271 deaths and 246 injured. Other officials said 327 bodies were found in Awaran and Kech districts. Officials said more people were feared to be buried under debris in far-flung areas which rescue teams had entered only today because of the difficult terrain and lack of roads. According to official estimates, over 300,000 people in six districts were affected by the quake that hit yesterday afternoon. Many do not have access to food, drinking water or shelter and the situation was exacerbated by the hot weather. Balochistan Chief Minister Abdul Malik Baloch has declared an emergency in Awaran and five other districts located near the epicentre. Over 1,000 Army and Frontier Corps personnel are involved in rescue operations and military officials said eight tonnes of food and medicines and six helicopters had been moved to the affected areas. A large number of people were rescued from the debris of collapsed mud-brick houses and the injured were given emergency aid by military doctors and paramedics. Residents of Awaran said no building in the town, including hospitals, schools and government officials, had remained intact. The Balochistan government has dispatched 1,000 tents, 500 food bags, medicines and 15 ambulances towards Awaran. Buledi told a news conference that the quake affected six districts and Awaran was the worst-hit area as hundreds of mud houses were destroyed. Aid workers were facing problems in reaching survivors as communication systems were affected by the quake. “We are seriously lacking medical facilities and there is no space to treat injured people in local hospitals. We are trying to shift seriously injured people to Karachi in helicopters,” he said. The quake was felt as far away as Karachi, Lahore and New Delhi. Aftershocks continued to be felt in Pakistan, and the latest one measuring 4.7 on the Richter scale jolted parts of the country today. The quake was Pakistan’s deadliest since the devastating temblor of 2005 that killed some 75,000 in the Kashmir region.— PTI
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‘Quake island’ spews methane gas
Islamabad, September 25 However, the site has fascinated local residents, who have thronged the coastline in Balochistan province to get a glimpse of the new piece of land that emerged from the sea. The island sprang from the seabed off the coastline near the port of Gwadar, 400 km from the quake’s epicentre. The Pakistani media has dubbed it the “Zalzala Jazeera” or “quake island”. Experts from the National Institute of Oceanography who are evaluating the island said it was spewing methane gas at several points. There is a visible presence of marine life on the island, they said. — PTI Rare Occurrence
* The island is 60 to 70 feet above sea level and its land mass measures about 120
by 300 metres * This is the third time in 15 years that such a phenomenon has occurred along the Balochistan coast. *
Earlier, islands emerged in 1999 and in 2011 at a distance of 2 km from the Makran coast near the point where the Hingol river drains into the sea *
Both these islands emerged without an earthquake and collapsed in strong currents and winds *
The same area witnessed an island's emergence in 1945 following an earthquake |
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Chinese street food vendor
executed, provokes outcry
Beijing, September 25 China's Supreme Court upheld a death sentence against Xia Junfeng, who murdered two officials after a dispute over his streetside stall in 2009, the Shenyang Intermediate People's court in northeast China said in a verified social media account. Xia had appealed his sentence on the grounds he killed the two officers in self-defence when they savagely attacked him and others in the city of Shenyang as he barbecued food on the street. Xia's case drew widespread sympathy amid regular reports of abuses by China's quasi-police city management officials. The officials, known
as chengguan, "have earned a reputation for brutality and impunity... They are now synonymous for many Chinese citizens with physical violence, illegal detention and theft," a spokeswoman for advocacy group Human Rights Watch said last year. — AFP in self-defence |
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US bar assures removal of Sikh Gurus’ portraits Indian among 4 held in Oz drug bust Whispering observed in non-humans Militants kill 24 across Iraq US flays attempts to boycott Nepal poll |
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Bomb disposal experts and investigators searched through the wreckage of a Kenyan shopping mall on Wednesday after a four-day attack by Islamist militants that killed at least 72 persons.
The much-anticipated meeting between US President Barack Obama and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly failed to take place as it turned out to be too complicated for Iranians, a senior Obama administration official has said.
UN inspectors returned to Syria today to pursue a probe into alleged poison gas attacks, as Russia and the West wrangled over how to eliminate President Bashar al-Assad's banned chemical weapons.
Islamabad, September 25
