Tag: Afternoon Edition

As new gunfire added to the tensions around the flashpoint city of Jos, the Catholic Pontiff added his voice to a chorus of international revulsion over the weekend slaughter which police now say left 109 people dead.

About 8,000 Nigerians have also fled their homes around Jos in the wake of the violence, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

As US Marines stood guard on roof tops and a small number of bemused Afghan men and boys looked on, Gates took a brief stroll along the dusty main street of Now Zad in southern Afghanistan, where a handful of humble shops have reopened since the Taliban retreated in December.

The mud-brick town remains mostly deserted and a long way from the bustling centre that once was home to about 30,000, but US officials hope life will gradually return as part of a NATO-led bid to push back the Taliban from its southern strongholds.

Funerals took place for victims of the three-hour orgy of violence on Sunday in three Christian villages close to the northern city of Jos, blamed on members of the mainly Muslim Fulani ethnic group.

While troops were deployed to the villages to prevent new attacks, security forces detained 95 suspects but faced bitter criticism over how the killers were able to go on the rampage at a time when a curfew was meant to be in force.

Brown distanced himself from military moves or diplomatic negotiations in the run-up to the conflict, but said he had always been fully informed and did everything required of him as finance minister under former premier Tony Blair.

“Nobody wants to go to war, nobody wants to see innocent people die, nobody wants to see their forces put at risk of their lives,” he said, but added: “I think it was the right decision and made for the right reasons.”

The blasts wounded 48 people, including 25 Iraqi soldiers, and came despite massive security, with troops, prisoners and the sick casting their ballots ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary election.

Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Omar al-Baghdadi has threatened to disrupt the election by “military means” and 200,000 police and soldiers have been deployed in the capital alone to try to prevent attacks.

The blasts in Baquba, the deadliest to hit the country in nearly a month, also wounded 55 people and spurred security forces to clamp an immediate curfew on the city, 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of Baghdad.

At least 10 policemen were among the 33 dead, a security official said.

President Michelle Bachelet doubled the number of troops patrolling the worst hit areas to 14,000, as people in ravaged Concepcion were barred from leaving their homes from 6:00 pm to midday.

“Military personnel will be present in the streets of Concepcion until midday to maintain public order, and they will not waver in carrying out their duties,” warned General Guillermo Ramirez.

The ominous sound of evacuation sirens blared in Hawaii and French Polynesia as a tsunami raced around the Pacific’s “Ring of Fire” after the 8.8-magnitude quake in Chile, which left at least 122 people dead.

About 50 countries and territories along an arc stretching from New Zealand to Japan were braced for immensely powerful waves, not long after the fifth anniversary of the Indian Ocean disaster that killed more than 220,000 people.

Cries for help from people digging for survivors in collapsed buildings were drowned out by the roar of heavy-duty engines as the troops plowed through Port-au-Prince without stopping to join rescue efforts, much less lead them.

A common sight since they were deployed in 2004, the U.N. troops huddled in the shade of their canopied vehicles.

“What happened here is unacceptable, but what happened here compels the international community, including France, to reflect on the mistakes that stopped it from preventing and halting this abominable crime,” he said.

Marking the first visit to Rwanda by a French president since the 1994 massacres, Sarkozy spoke at a joint press conference with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who has repeatedly accused Paris of aiding the genocide.

The children arrived on a charter flight to Miami International Airport. They will be taken to a shelter and their new parents can take the children home Thursday, according to Jan Bonnema, the Minnesota-based founder of the Children of The Promise orphanage.

On Saturday, a group of 20 men blocked four women accompanying the orphans to the airport, shouting: “You can’t take our children!” Police briefly detained the women and the orphans – ages 1-5 – spent three night sleeping on the ground in a tent city. The U.S. Embassy official carrying the documents needed to take them through immigration had been running late.

Social Welfare agency chief Jeanne Bernard Pierre would not say when her office handed the children over to U.S. officials.

The children, ages 1 to 5, were seized by police Saturday from four women who were accompanying them out of Haiti, apparently with the correct legal paperwork. An angry crowd had accused the group of child trafficking.