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08 News
Timeline: World’s deadliest mass shootings NEWS DESK
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ome of the deadliest mass shootings that have taken place in the last three decades: December 14, 2012: A total of 27 people are killed at a primary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in the northeastern United States, after a gunman opened fire. Twenty children and six adults were killed at the school, and another adult was killed at a second location. The gunman was also killed. December 12, 2012: A gunman opens fire inside an Oregon shopping mall, killing at least two people before shooting himself to death. August 14, 2012: A gunman shoots and kills a police officer and a civilian near a university in the US state of Texas, police said. August 5, 2012: Army veteran Wade Michael Page kills five men and one woman and wounds three other people, including a police officer, before taking his own life at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin outside Milwaukee. July 20, 2012: At least 12 people are
killed when a gunman enters an Aurora, Colorado, movie theatre, releases a canister of gas and then opens fire during opening night of the Batman movie ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. James Holmes, a 24year-old former graduate student at the University of Colorado, has been charged in the deaths. July 22, 2011: Confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik kills 77 in Norway in twin attacks: a bombing in downtown Oslo and a shooting massacre at a youth camp outside the capital. The self-styled antiMuslim fanatic admitted both attacks. January 8, 2011: A gunman kills six people and wounds 13 others, including thenUS Representative Gabrielle Giffords, in a shooting spree outside a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona. Doctors say Jared Lee Loughner, who has been charged in the deaths, suffers from schizophrenia. November 5, 2009: Thirteen soldiers and civilians were killed and more than two dozen wounded when a gunman walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Texas, and opened fire. Army psychiatrist Major
Nidal Hasan is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. April 30, 2009: Farda Gadyrov, 29, enters the prestigious Azerbaijan State Oil Academy in the capital, Baku, armed with an automatic pistol and clips. He kills 12 people before killing himself as police close in. March 10, 2009: Michael McLendon, 28, killed 10 people, including his mother, four other relatives, and the wife and child of a local sheriff’s deputy, across two rural Alabama counties. He then killed himself. September 23, 2008: Matti Saari, 22, walks into a vocational college in Kauhajoki, Finland, and opens fire, killing 10 people and burning their bodies with firebombs before shooting himself fatally in the head. November 7, 2007: After revealing plans for his attack in YouTube postings, 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen fires kills eight people at his high school in Tuusula, Finland. April 16, 2007: Seung-Hui Cho, 23, kills 32 people and himself on the Virginia
Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. April 26, 2002: Robert Steinhaeuser, 19, who had been expelled from school in Erfurt, Germany, kills 13 teachers, two former classmates and policeman, before committing suicide. April 20, 1999: Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before killing themselves in the school’s library. April 28, 1996: Martin Bryant, 29, bursts into cafeteria in seaside resort of Port Arthur in Tasmania, Australia, shooting 20 people to death. Driving away, he kills 15 others. He was captured and imprisoned. March 13, 1996: Thomas Hamilton, 43, kills 16 kindergarten children and their teacher in elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and then kills himself. October 16, 1991: A deadly shooting rampage took place in Killeen, Texas, as George Hennard opened fire at a Luby’s Cafeteria, killing 23 people before taking his own life. 20 others were wounded in the attack.
June 18, 1990: James Edward Pough shoots people at random in a General Motors Acceptance Corp. office in Jacksonville, Florida, killing 10 and wounding four, before killing himself. December 6, 1989: Marc Lepine, 25, bursts into Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique college, shooting at women he encounters, killing nine and then himself. August 19, 1987: Michael Ryan, 27, kills 16 people in small market town of Hungerford, England, and then shoots himself dead after being cornered by police. August 20, 1986: Pat Sherrill, 44, a postal worker who was about to be fired, shoots 14 people at a post office in Edmond, Oklahoma. He then kills himself. July 18, 1984: James Oliver Huberty, an out-of-work security guard, kills 21 people in a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, California. A police sharpshooter kills Huberty. July 12, 1976: Edward Charles Allaway, a custodian in the library of California State University, Fullerton, fatally shot seven fellow employees and wounded two others.
Migrants found dead off Greek coast AtheNS: At least 18 migrants have died and 11 are missing after their boat sank off the coast of Greece in the Aegean Sea, police have said. “Only one person was plucked out of the water and hospitalised while 11 bodies were found on a beach” near the town of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, a police spokesman told the AFP news agency on Saturday. Coast guard officials said the victims were trying to cross illegally into Greece when their boat capsized early Friday. The spokesman said that 11 people were still missing following the sinking on late Thursday. A 20-year-old man found alive on Friday told authorities there were 28 people on the crowded boat, including its Turkish owner. The man, who has been hospitalized, is the sole survivor found so far. A coast guard spokeswoman said the migrants were “of Asian origin’’ without specifying further. Coast guard vessels have been scouring the nearly calm seas east of Lesbos. Tens of thousands of undocumented migrants cross into Greece each year, most through land and sea coming from Turkey. AgENCIES
Dr Congo fighting ‘sees refugee numbers rise’ GOMA: Humanitarian workers have warned of a sharp rise in refugees in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo as a result of recent fighting. The charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) told the BBC that there were now more than 800,000 displaced people in the province of North Kivu. That marks a sharp rise from the 500,000 estimated in the province before the latest violence. Last month it saw fighting between government forces and the M23 rebels. MSF said the refugees lacked shelter and other essential items, and had in some cases fled from one displacement camp to another over years of fighting. M23 rebels, made up of deserters from the Congolese army, had threatened to overthrow the government after taking the eastern city of Goma in a rebellion in November. The region has been plagued by violence for years. The fighting between the M23 rebel group and government troops has now died down, with both sides in neighbouring Uganda for peace talks. But correspondents say there is no guarantee that the conflict will finally end, allowing people to return to their homes. AgENCIES
WASHINgTON: A child protects candle from the wind during a vigil outside the White House in Washington, DC following the Connecticut elementary school shooting that left 20 children dead. AgENcIES
South Africa’s ANC tense ahead of leadership vote CAPE TOWN AgENCIES
The executive committee of South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), was to meet for the last time ahead of the opening of the party’s leadership conference in Bloemfontein. The executive committee, meeting on Saturday, was expected to discuss the crucial issues of court rulings on Friday on two of its provincial constituencies. The vote for the incumbent country and party leader, Jacob Zuma, in the Free State Province constituency, where the leadership conference is being held, was ruled as invalid on Friday. David Mosiane Chika, a leader in a second constituency and an anti-Zuma member was
murdered on Friday morning, in what some party leaders believe was an assassination. The run-up to the ANC’s leadership election, which is likely to determine the leadership of the country as well, has been dogged by accusations of political assassinations, corruption and irregularities. The executive is expected to address these issues on Saturday, in an attempt to ease brewing tensions ahead of the conference. Nominations of party challengers have not yet been officially announced by the ANC, but country and party deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe announced on Thursday that he would challenge Zuma for the post of president, while also accepting a nomination to retain his position. Motlanthe faces a challenge for his post as
deputy from Cyril Ramaphosa, an anti-apartheid union leader. Zuma has, however, been nominated by six of the country’s nine provinces. Only three regions have voted in favour of Motlanthe for president. At the previous ANC election, in 2007, Zuma ousted then-president Thabo Mbeki, creating rifts within the party. Some analysts are saying that this conference could be a fierce race for the top ANC positions and could divide the party, which is one of the biggest fears people have because its members are not unified, with the different factions within the party, said our correspondent. The ANC, which has run South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994, still however retains strong support of most of South Africans.
rebels ‘seize Syrian army school’ in Aleppo DAMASCUS AgENCIES
Opposition fighters have announced that they took control of the Syrian army infantry school in the suburbs of Aleppo, after more than 20 days of fighting with government forces. The school is a located in the strategic Msalamiyyah town near the main road that connects Aleppo city with its northern suburbs. “The school was a military base for the regime. Tanks stationed there used to shell nearby towns in Aleppo,” an oppo-
Sunday, 16 December, 2012
sition activist said. The school, which has a 3km-square campus, is around 10km away from the centre of Aleppo, Syria’s second city. Rebels have taken over several military installations across the country over the past few months. Sunday’s alleged takeover came amid reports of fighting around the air force intelligence branch in the Zahraa district of Aleppo city and around Mingh military airport in the outskirts of Aleppo. Meanwhile, near Damascus, activists said that fierce fighting was taking place on Saturday in the town of Daraya, as the
army sent in reinforcements and tried to storm the town. “This is the 28th day the criminal [President Bahsar] al-Assad forces have attempted to break into the town,” read a statement from activists in Daraya. Air and artillery bombardments have focused on Daraya and the nearby town of Mudamiyeh in recent weeks, raising fears of a major ground assault. “Daraya remains isolated from the outside world due to a communications and power cut for the past 37 days. With ongoing fuel cuts, there is an urgent need for supplies to be restored as winter sets
in,” they said. Daraya was the scene in August of the single worst massacre in Syria’s conflict, where hundreds were reported killed. Clashes also erupted in the Palestinian camp of Yarmuk in the south of the capital on Saturday between rebels and troops backed by pro-regime Palestinian fighters, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The towns of of Harasta, Erbeen and al-Zabani, in the outskirts of the capital, have witnessed heavy bombardment by government forces, activists said on Saturday. Damascus province is now a key bat-
tlefield, as regime forces battle to retake control of an 8km belt around the capital. And in the southern province of Daraa, rebels and troops clashed in the towns of Sheikh Maskin and Izraa, as villages and towns came under army shelling. More than 40,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Assad’s rule erupted in March 2011. The latest reports of violence came as NATO’s senior military commander confirmed that several Scud missiles fired at rebels by Syria, saying that they landed “fairly close” to the Turkish border.