KHI 16-04-2012_Layout 1 4/16/2012 3:31 AM Page 12
12 Foreign News
Monday, 16 April, 2012
Children killed in restive Yemen south SANAA afP
three children were among four people killed on Sunday in Yemen’s restive east and south by suspected Al-Qaeda militants, security officials said, a day after three jihadist leaders were killed in an air strike. the defence ministry said in a statement on its website that three “local Al-Qaeda leaders” were killed in a Yemeni air strike late Saturday while a security official told AFP the raid was conducted by a US drone. the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the strike hit a moving vehicle carrying Al-Qaeda operatives in the province of Bayda, some 210 kilometres (130 miles) southeast of the capital Sanaa. the ministry, however, maintained the government’s routine insistance that only its aircraft carry out such operations on Yemeni soil. the United States has never formally acknowledged the use of drones against Al-Qaeda in Yemen, considered by Washington to be the most active and deadly branch of the global terror network and a major focus of its “war on terror.” the three children, including two siblings, were killed Sunday when a roadside bomb exploded in the eastern province of hadramawt, a security official told AFP. he blamed Al-Qaeda militants for planting the device and said a “suspicious vehicle” had been spotted in the area the night before. the children were killed while walking to school by what the official described as an improvised “time bomb.” in other violence Sunday, one person was killed and at least five others were wounded, including two women, in an AlQaeda mortar attack on the southern town of Loder, a security official told AFP. the victim was a member of a committee of armed residents fighting alongside the Yemeni army, the official added. he said “sporadic” clashes continued in the strategic town where last week fierce battles raged between militants and the army. At least 222 people, including 183 militants, were killed in five days as AlQaeda tried to seize the town.
Syria clashes warm up ahead of UN team arrival DAMASCUS afP
Syrian forces reportedly killed four civilians in shelling of rebel areas and clashes with gunmen on Sunday, testing a shaky UNbacked ceasefire as international monitors prepared to fly in. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad subjected the Khaldiyeh and Bayada neighbourhoods of the flashpoint central city of homs to their fiercest bombardment since the truce came into force at dawn on thursday, monitors said. “the bombardment of Khaldiyeh intensified this morning with an average of three shells a minute,” the head of the Syrian Observatory for human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP. he said one civilian was killed in Khaldiyeh, another was killed in shelling of the Jobar neighbourhood, and a third was shot dead by a sniper in Qsour. With clashes warming up and both sides blaming each other for the violence, shabiha pro-regime militiamen also shot dead a civilian in the town of Aqrab, in the central province of hama. three civilians died in homs shelling on Saturday, among 14 people reported killed nationwide ahead of a UN Security Council vote approving the dispatch of the observer mission to monitor the truce. Elsewhere, rebel fighters clashed with security forces in Al-Bab in the northern province of Aleppo, near the town’s State Security police headquarters, the Britain-based Observatory added. Opposition group the Local Coordination Committees said the army shelled the village of Khirbet al-Joz in the northwestern province of idlib, which is base to fighters from the rebel Free Syrian Army. thirty-two people have been killed since the ceasefire brokered by UN-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan took effect, most of them civilians, the Observatory said.
BurgoS: People take part in a historical re-enactment of the first uprising of the Spanish people against the occupation by napoleon’s troops, on Sunday. Burgos was the city which rose for the first time against the french occupation with some weapons and called for justice, challenging authority of the city. the uprising was followed later by the revolution of madrid’s people against the french occupation on may 2, 1808. AFP
French rivals hold duelling Paris rallies one week from vote PARIS
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hOUSANDS of supporters of France’s right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist challenger Francois hollande gathered in Paris on Sunday for duelling rallies one week before polling day. Sarkozy summoned what he calls his “silent majority” to the Place de la Concorde in the heart of the city, while an increasingly confident hollande staged a concert and campaign meeting at the Chateau de Vincennes in the east. “to imagine an election already won would be a political, even a moral mistake. Nevertheless, i admit, i am ready to govern France,” hollande declared in
a interview with the weekly Le Journal du Dimanche. his buoyant mood in the final straight was supported by the latest opinion polls, which all still predict a close first round on April 22 followed by a comfortable victory for hollande in a May 6 run-off against Sarkozy. Sarkozy and hollande both hoped to gather tens of thousands of their own supporters — and the attention of television cameras — to launch the final week of campaigning before the first round on a triumphant note. Speeches got underway first at Sarkozy’s event, with the leaders of his UMP party taking to the stage to denounce the left, while at Vincennes the French West indian band Kassav took to the stage to entertain hollande’s
crowd. UMP leader Jean-Francois Cope claimed 100,000 had come to cheer Sarkozy, under a sea of tricolour flags, but observers thought this an exagerrated estimate. the rival crowds looked similar in scale in television images. “today, Paris is yours! Your number is a stinging riposte to those who said you were resigned and voiceless,” Prime Minister Francois Fillon declared. hollande’s adviser Manuel Valls claimed on twitter that the Socialists had also gathered 100,000, again appearing to err on the high side. Police said in advance that they would not be giving an official estimate of the crowd. Observers were keen to see who could draw the biggest or most fervent crowds, but nothing in the race has yet
French Muslims feel stigmatised in vote debate ROUBAIX afP
When police kicked in Mohamed Asbol’s at dawn and hauled away his son on suspicion of being an islamist radical, he saw it as further proof that he was not considered fully French. the 64-year-old was born in Algeria but came to France as a teenager, took French nationality, worked for decades as a welder, paid his taxes and quietly brought up his family in the northern city of Roubaix. But, he insisted, as a friend arrived to help him fix the door on his modest redbrick terraced house, he is still seen as an outsider and he believes the policies of President Nicolas Sarkozy are reinforcing that prejudice. “they broke my dignity. i am disappointed with France. it’s obvious that he is stigmatising Muslims to get votes,” said Asbol, just a week before the first round of voting in France’s presidential election. “Just because my son has a beard, wears a djellaba and goes to the mosque doesn’t mean he’s a ter-
rorist!” he said, indignantly. his 28-year-old son Said’s arrest came during a series of police raids on April 4 that netted 10 individuals in cities across France. the first wave netted deactivated assault rifles and other weapons and a number of people were kept in custody on terrorist-linked charges. But the second round, conducted under the glare of deliberately invited television cameras, came to nothing. Said Arbol and the nine others were released without charge. this led to claims that Sarkozy was using the raids to burnish his tough-guy anti-immigrant credentials and to poach votes from erstwhile supporters of the anti-immigrant National Front party. Such criticism is particularly trenchant in Roubaix, a city of around 95,000 people on the Belgian border that has the biggest ethnic mix of any French city outside Paris and also happens to be France’s poorest town. Many of the city’s residents are Muslim, and many feel particularly
angry at Sarkozy, who bluntly announced last month in his first major campaign interview that there were “too many foreigners” in France. Sarkozy has consistently trailed his Socialist rival Francois hollande in the opinion polls. “they have attacked us on all fronts — the burqa, halal meat, young people,” said 34-year-old Moussa Gacem as he stood behind the counter at the Roubaix snack bar where he worked. Gacem, a French national born here of North African parents, was referring to a law Sarkozy passed banning the full-face veil that had been worn by a tiny minority of Muslim women in France. Sarkozy has also sparked protests from both Jewish and Muslim leaders, who complained that their communities were being used as pawns in the election, after the president criticised the production of halal and kosher meat. “if islam can be used as a target then Sarkozy will do that,” said Gacem.
shifted the underlying polling data: Sarkozy appears to be on course for a clear defeat after one term. A cautious campaigner, hollande has not generated much passion in his own camp, but insisted: “i do not want to be president by default. the country is not waiting for a president to leave, but for a new one to arrive.” he has invited popular rock bands to entertain the crowds at his festivallike rally in a leafy area of eastern Paris near the working-class districts that he will have to mobilise to ensure a majority. Sarkozy’s camp mocked the line-up, joking that musicians had been invited because the Socialists feared that no one would turn up to hear hollande’s stump speech, and promised a more traditional rally of their own.
Britain says its embassy staff in Kabul ‘accounted for’ LONDON afP
All British embassy staff in Kabul have been “accounted for” amid explosions and heavy gunfire in the diplomatic quarter of the Afghan capital, the Foreign Office said in a statement on Sunday. “We can confirm that there is an ongoing incident in the diplomatic area of Kabul. We are in close contact with the embassy, all staff are accounted for,” it said, while Foreign Office sources added that there had been no injuries. Suicide bombers struck across Afghanistan on Sunday in coordinated attacks claimed by taliban insurgents as the start of a spring offensive. the German and Japanese embassy compounds were reported hit as militants attacked the city’s diplomatic enclave and tried to storm parliament — sparking a gun battle in which lawmakers and bodyguards fired back from the rooftop. A spokeswoman of the German embassy told AFP that there was “smaller damage to the property”, but no one had been injured. the embassies of the United States and Britain were also targeted, the spokesman for NAtO’s international Security Assistance Force, General Carsten Jacobson, said.