Negative Blogs

Both the insurgent group Al Shabab and the US-backed Somali government rely on children to fill their ranks, human rights officials say.

The United States this week joined other members of the United Nations Security Council in condemning the growing use of children in conflict – as soldiers, bomb makers, cooks, and sex slaves – by rebel groups and governments alike.

Yet even as the US singles out Somalia as one of the world’s worst child-soldier offenders, mounting evidence suggests the US-backed Somali government is using child soldiers in its fight with the Islamist-militant Al Shabab group.

And that in turn has some experts concluding that the US assistance is paying the pittance salaries of Somali child soldiers.

At Tuesday’s Security Council debate on children and armed conflict, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said the US is “particularly concerned about the situation in Somalia,” where she said all parties to the conflict have “placed several thousand children in the line of fire.”

The US, she said, calls on the parties to the conflict to cease child recruitment and to release those children already in the fight.

But both the US-backed Somali transitional federal government and the rebels the government is battling rely on children to fill out their soldier ranks, say UN and non-governmental human rights officials. The government has a force that is up to one-quarter children, experts estimate, while children may make up as much as three-quarters of Al-Shabab’s fighters.

The Somali government, which barely hangs on in the capital of Mogadishu and has lost much of the country’s central and southern regions to the rebels, acknowledges using children in its war and has not made removing them from the fight a top priority, the New York Times said in a report from Mogadishu Monday.

Tuesday’s Security Council debate came a month after the UN special representative for children and armed conflict for the first time issued a list of the “most persistent violators” of the international convention against the use of children in conflict. That list includes the Somali transitional government, pro-government and insurgent groups in Sudan, rebel groups in Colombia and the Philippines, both the government and rebel groups in Burma, and the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) with roots in Uganda.

In her comments, Ambassador Rice singled out cases of child soldiers in addition to Somalia – including the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But she said the US especially “abhors” the LRA’s practice of “forced recruitment through abduction.”

The UN’s annual report does note some examples of progress. Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN special representative for children and armed conflict, said Burundi was delisted as a convention violator. Also last year, rebel groups in the Philippines, Nepal, and Sudan signed agreements to end their recruitment of child soldiers.

By Howard LaFranchiBy

Al Shabab fighters conduct a military exercise in northern Mogadishu, Somalia, on Jan. 1. The UN Security Council this week condemned Somalia and others for their use of child soldiers.

Two transport accidents in China have claimed dozens of lives, with a passenger train derailed by a landslide and a truck colliding with a bus.

State media said 32 people were killed on Sunday when a truck travelling in the wrong direction on an expressway collided head-on with a bus in the country’s northeast.

Another 21 people were injured and sent to hospital.

The collision occurred on a section of the expressway that was undergoing maintenance in the city of Fuzin in Liaoning province, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Derailed

In another incident, Chinese state television said a landslide in eastern China derailed a passenger train early on Sunday morning, killing at least eight people and injuring 55.

The train was bound for the tourist destination of Guilin when it was derailed in a mountainous area near Fuzhou city in eastern Jiangxi province.

Heavy rains caused a landslide that buried the railway tracks, and the train derailed when it crashed into the huge mound of dirt and debris, China Central Television said.

Xinhua said about 2,000 rescuers, including firefighters, police and soldiers, managed to evacuate at least 280 people who were trapped inside the carriages.

Chinese authorities have launched an investigation into the accident.

Tens of thousands of people die in transport-related.

A court in eastern China has sentenced a man to death for knifing 29 children and three teachers in an attack on a kindergarten, state media reports.

Xu Yuyuan was found guilty of attempted murder after a half-day trial at Taixing Intermediate Court in Jiangsu province, Xinhua reported.

Xu reportedly said his motive was to vent his rage against society. It was not clear whether he would appeal.

All 32 victims survived April’s attack at Taixing’s Zhongxin Kindergarten.

China has been rocked by a string of school attacks in the past two months, in which dozens have been killed or wounded.

China’s Premier Wen Jiabao has said the attacks show the country has “social tensions” which must be addressed.

The education ministry has ordered all schools to upgrade their security facilities, teach students about safety and ensure that young children were escorted home.

Some local police authorities have distributed steel pitchforks and pepper spray to security guards in schools but such measures are considered expensive and their effectiveness is unproven.

But Mr Wen told a Hong Kong television channel on Thursday that as well as boosting the security presence, China needed to “handle social problems, resolve disputes and strengthen mediation at the grassroots level”.

Discourage copycats?

On Wednesday, seven children thought to be under the age of six and two adults were hacked to death at a kindergarten near Hanzhong city in Shaanxi province. The attacker later killed himself, Xinhua reported.

In March, a man stabbed to death eight pupils at a school in Fujian province. He was executed soon afterwards.

China has in the past had a comparatively low rate of violent crime, meaning the recent violence has been all the more shocking.

There has been much speculation on the cause of the attacks, with some blaming inadequate provision for people with mental health issues.

Others have suggested the attacks are a form of revenge on society by individuals with no outlet for their anger in a political environment heavily controlled by the ruling Communist Party.

Reports in official media have generally played down any wider causes for the school attacks, portraying them as isolated incidents perpetrated by disturbed individuals.

All 32 victims survived April's attack at Taixing's Zhongxin Kindergarten.

Seventy Dutch passengers were among the 103 people killed in the Libya plane crash in which an 8-year-old boy was the sole survivor, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

Officials had previously said 58 Dutch passengers died in the accident Wednesday.

Afriqiyah Airways confirmed on its Web site late Wednesday that the other 92 passengers and 11 crew members were killed when the plane crashed while trying to land at the Tripoli International Airport.

The child, identified as Ruben van Assouw, suffered multiple fractures in his lower limbs and underwent an operation at Al Khadra Hospital in Tripoli, a doctor at the hospital said.

He lost blood but is now much better, said the doctor, who declined to give her name.

The boy has seen a Dutch Embassy representative and is sedated and asleep, she said, adding that he will undergo multiple scans Thursday.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry, which had a representative at the hospital waiting to identify the boy, declined to confirm the child’s name.

The Afriqiyah Airways plane originated in Johannesburg, South Africa. As well as the 70 Dutch citizens killed, six South Africans died along with two Libyans, two Austrians, one German, one French, one Zimbabwean and two Britons.

Other passengers’ nationalities could not immediately be identified. The 11 crew members were all Libyan.

The plane, an Airbus A330-200, was at the end of its nearly nine-hour flight when it crashed at 6 a.m.

“We express our sincere regret and sadness on behalf of the airline. As well, we would like to express our condolences to the relatives and friends of those who had passengers on Flight 8U771 destined for Tripoli late last night, due to arrive around 6 o’clock this morning,” said Nicky Knapp, a representative of the Airports Company South Africa. She was speaking on behalf of Afriqiyah Airways.

Jerzy Buzek, president of the European Parliament, said the child’s survival, “given this tragic event, is truly a miracle.”

At the crash site, workers with surgical masks combed through the smoldering wreckage, which spilled over a large area. A wheel lay atop a pile of bags. Two green airline seats sat upright and intact amid burned parts of the aircraft.

Officials recovered the plane’s flight data recorder, which investigators use to piece together a flight’s last minutes.

The Tripoli-based Afriqiyah (Arabic for “African”) operates flights to four continents. The planes in the fleet carry the logo 9.9.99: the date when the African Union was formed.

The plane that crashed was one of three Airbus 330-200s that the airline owns.

By the CNN

A Dutch boy is the sole survivor of a plane crash in Libya that killed more than 100 people. The plane crashed short of the runway at Tripoli airport en route to London's Gatwick airport.

A man in northwest China killed seven kindergartners and two teachers Wednesday, in the sixth school attack since March.

Beijing — A man wielding a kitchen cleaver killed seven children and two teachers at a kindergarten in northwest China on Wednesday, in the latest of a series of attacks on schools that has sparked widespread public alarm.

Some have pointed blame at the desperate frustration building up over social injustices. Many commentators have blamed the nature of Chinese society under repressive, one-party rule.

“The fundamental problem is that our society is sick,” Zhou Xiaozheng, a retired sociology professor in Beijing, told the Monitor earlier this month. “We suffer from corrupt officials, unfair distribution of resources, and an unjust legal system. These are the sorts of things that attack a society’s immune system.”

The killer in Wednesday’s attack, Wu Huanmin, later committed suicide at home, according to a local official quoted by the official Xinhua news agency, which said that “his motive was not immediately known.”

The rampage brought the death toll from six similar assaults since March to 18; more than 80 people have been injured.

President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had both called for action to protect schoolchildren even before today’s bloodshed.

For some Americans, the attacks in China are reminiscent of the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, when a series of copycat attacks occurred. It also prompted tighter security measures in schools nationwide.

By Peter Ford

A policeman walks outside Shengshui Temple kindergarten in Nanzheng county of Hanzhong, Shaanxi Province, Wednesday. A man killed seven children and two teachers at a kindergarten in northwest China on Wednesday in the latest of a series of attacks on schools.

China is reeling from a surge of attacks on innocent children and the country is searching for answers while beefing up security for schools.

In the most recent attack, a local farmer in Shandong province injured five pre-school children and a teacher before burning himself to death.

Two children were saved from his grip.

It was the fourth attack in a month on schools and children in China.

On Thursday, a middle-aged man armed with a knife wounded 28 children and three adults at a kindergarten in Jiangsu province, eastern China. Five children were left in a critical condition.

On Wednesday, a teacher on sick leave because of a mental illness wounded 16 children and a staff member at a primary school in Guangdong province.

The same day, another man was executed for murdering eight children last month outside an elementary school in Fujian province.

The education ministry has formed an emergency panel to tackle the violence and some local police authorities have distributed such instruments as steel pitchforks and pepper spray to security guards in schools.

‘Social revenge’

China used to take pride in its low rate of violent crimes but now has to deal with them almost every day, leading many to ask what has caused the sudden surge of apparently random attacks.

The wave of violence has been dubbed cases of “social revenge” in China.

Ji Jianlin, a professor of clinical psychology at Shanghai’s Fudan University, says the incidents share some common features.

“The attackers all have grudges against society. They all try to take revenge by attacking the young and vulnerable,” he says.

In part, it reflects the social tension caused by rampant corruption and inequality. But Prof Ji points out that there is a lack of social and psychological support in the rapidly changing society.

“In the past, China’s workers used to have social support from the unions or women’s associations. They used to provide quite adequate support. It’s now quite weak.”

This is especially true in smaller cities and towns. In a country where people used to be looked after from cradle to grave, the social change has not only left many Chinese without their traditional support mechanism but also pushed a large number of people into relative poverty.

And the income gap is widening further between the rich and poor.

This, coupled with a changed attitude towards life, has driven many to extremes in their desperate attempt to come to terms with the law of the jungle prevalent there.

On top of that, there is still a stigma in Chinese culture about people needing psychological counselling.

Family members and society as a whole tend to conceal or shun those with mental problems. This may partly lead to attackers failing to get help before they commit crimes.

There is also suspicion that widespread reports of the attacks may have encouraged copycats. Three out of the four recent attacks were carried out with knives.

Whatever the causes may be, the parents of the victims are paying a high price.

By Shirong Chen

China has been shocked by the outburst of violent crime.

Four young children are reported to have died after a former insurance salesman slashed and stabbed his way through a kindergarten in southern China, in the second such attack in as many days.

The well-regarded Caijing magazine said that four children were killed in this morning’s s attack. Officials declined to comment.

The man stabbed 28 children as well as a teacher, a security guard and a school volunteer who tried to protect the terrified four-year-olds.

Coming less than 24 hours after a mentally ill former teacher hacked at 15 pupils and a teacher in a southern China primary school, the attack has sparked nationwide outrage and heartsearching about why children have become targets.

Officials said that Xu Yuyuan, 47, broke into a classroom at the nursery school in Taixing city in southeastern Jiangsu province at about 9.40am today and attacked the children with a 20cm (9in) knife.

A photograph from the scene showed blood spattered across the school steps — presumably as the wounded were rushed to hospital.

A staff member at the Taixing No 1 People’s Hospital said that some of the wounded were being treated there. He said: “The injured have been sent here one after another. The doctors are now trying their best to save them.”

Five of the children were in critical condition in hospital in Jiangsu province, said Zhu Guiming, an official with the propaganda department in Taixing city. However, officials told state media that no deaths had been reported and the condition of the most badly hurt was stabilising.

Police have arrested Mr Xu, who was described as unemployed after having worked for a local insurance company until 2001.

Yesterday a 33-year-old man with a history of mental illness rushed into classrooms at the Leizhou primary school in southern Guangdong province, brandishing a knife about a foot long. He injured 16 children and a teacher, stabbing them in the back arms and head. None of the victims was reported to be in serious condition.

The man then made his way to a top-floor balcony, from which threatened to throw himself off, before being arrested.

Several schools across China have been the subject of similar attacks in recent yeas, provoking anger from parents and the meda.

Hours before the primary school attack, state media announced the execution of a former medical worker who stabbed to death eight children on March 23 as they waited for the gates to open for morning classes at their school in eastern Fujian province. Zheng Minsheng, 41, told the court that he carried had out the attack in a fit of rage after splitting from his girlfriend.

Across the internet, the only forum for popular discussion in China, chatrooms were filled with anger at the latest attack. One comment read: “Governments, let me ask, what crime has the next generation committed and why can criminals bring these tragedies to innocent children? I appeal to the government to save our children.” Another wrote: “Our government should pause to consider seriously just what the problem is here.”

One expert attributed the string of attacks on schoolchildren to increasing social problems. Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor at Renmin University in Beijing, said that the choice of schoolchildren as victims could be a form of copycat phenomenon. This sort of violent attack often happened in clusters, he said.

“It’s like suicide, which is another type of mental health problem that can spread in a community. Normally, with these kind of violent events we hope the media won’t blow them up too much. Because that tends to make it spread.”

By Jane Macartney

A woman holding a baby stands near the gate of Zhongxin Kindergarten where a class of 4-year-olds were attacked by a knife-wielding man in Taixing, in east China's Jiangsu Province.

Police in northwestern Pakistan say two separate bomb explosions in the city of Peshawar have killed at least 23 people and wounded many others.  The violence-hit city is the gateway to Afghanistan.

Police say that most of the deaths occurred when a suicide bomber attacked a rally in Peshawar’s busy Qissa Khawani market.  Activists of the right-wing religious party, Jamaat-i-Islami, had organized the rally to protest against frequent power cuts in the city.

Those killed in the attack include a senior police officer, his security guard and several rally leaders.  The city police chief says the slain police officer and his colleagues were apparently the target of the deadly attack.

An eyewitness told reporters on the scene the bomber was a teenage boy who detonated the device as the rally was about to disperse.  

The man says the blast instantly killed and wounded many people, but fears of a second explosion kept people away from helping the victims for a while.  

Police say they have found the head of the suicide bomber and an investigation is underway.  

The attack occurred hours after a bomb exploded outside a school run by a police welfare foundation.  A six-year-old boy was killed and at least eight others were wounded in the blast.

Provincial Information Minister Iftikhar Hussain tells VOA the violence is the work of Taliban extremists, in retaliation for security forces dismantling their bases.

The minister says these terrorists are like beasts and they are killing innocent people.  But he says the violence will not deter the government’s campaign aimed at eliminating the militants.  

The attacks in Peshawar follow three bomb blasts over the weekend in the nearby town of Kohat that killed around 50 people.

Pakistani security forces have conducted frequent raids against al-Qaida and Taliban militants in the country’s northwestern tribal areas, which border Afghanistan.  Officials believe the security operations have provoked the militants to carry out attacks on security forces, mosques, schools, public places and markets, leaving thousand of people dead in recent years.

by Ayaz Gul

Pakistani rescue workers collect the remains of victims at the site of bomb explosion at a market in Peshawar.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A bomb exploded outside a school run by a police welfare foundation in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar on Monday, killing a young boy and wounding 10 other people, police said.

Taliban and al-Qaida militants currently fighting Pakistani security forces will be suspected in the attack because of the school’s link to the police. The militants have appeared willing to inflict civilian casualties in their attacks on the state.

Insurgents based in the Afghan border region have carried hundreds of attacks over the last three years. Two blasts over the weekend in the nearby Kohat tribal region killed around 50 people, most of them refugees lining up to register for food and other aid.

The Police Public School was in session when the bomb went off, said police official Shafiullah Khan.

The school is run by a police welfare foundation, which raises money to help families of police officers.

The dead boy was aged between 5 and 7, Khan said. Ten other people were wounded, including five children.

Also Monday, suspected Taliban militants in the northwest detonated two bombs that destroyed a pair of oil tankers along a vital route used to supply NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

No one was wounded, but the fire also engulfed a flatbed truck and nearby shops in the Takhta Beg area of the Khyber tribal region, local official Iqbal Khan said.

Taliban militants and ordinary criminals frequently attack vehicles along the supply route that runs through the famed Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. The U.S. and NATO say their Afghan operations have felt limited impact, but they are establishing alternate routes.

Pakistani firefighters try to extinguish a burning oil tanker after bomb explosions in Takhta Beg, an area of Pakistani Khyber tribal region along Afghan border, Monday, April 19, 2010. An official said suspected Taliban militants in northwestern Pakistan detonated two bombs that destroyed a pair of oil tankers along a vital supply route used by NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Qazi Rauf)

The second record storm that socked the Northeast this month was reduced to drizzle as it was winding down Wednesday, but the worst of widespread flooding was yet to come, forecasters said.

Rivers from Maine to New York were expected to crest later Wednesday or Thursday. And in Rhode Island, officials were bracing for what was expected to be the most severe flooding to hit the state in more than 100 years.

“None of us alive have seen the flooding that we are experiencing now or going to experience,” Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri said Tuesday night. “This is unprecedented in our state’s history.”

Interstate 95, a major East Coast thoroughfare, was closed for about a quarter-mile in Warwick, R.I., because of flooding and down to one lane in other areas of Rhode Island. Officials on Wednesday warned that stretches of the highway could remain closed for several days as the water recedes and to allow time for safety inspections.

Nonessential state employees were given the day off in Rhode Island and state offices were closed. Schools and private businesses were urged to follow the same policy. State officials asked drivers to stay off the road.

“If we end up with a gridlock, it’s going to impact the entire state,” said Amy Kempe, a spokeswoman for the governor.

President Barack Obama issued an emergency declaration late Tuesday for the state, ordering federal aid for disaster relief and authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate relief efforts.

The rain came as residents were still recovering from a storm two weeks ago that dumped as much as 10 inches on the region. Business owners in the flood zone are still grappling with the impact of lost income.

“It’s definitely devastating,” said liquor store owner Maria Medeiros, whose family-owned business in Providence now abuts raging rapids of water and streets barricaded by the police. “Situations like this, what can you do?”

Even fishermen were hit: Shellfish beds in Rhode Island and Massachusetts were closed because of sewage overflows and failures at wastewater treatment facilities caused by flooding.

National Guard troops were activated in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Pockets of home evacuations were reported in those states, as well, and more than 100 people were ordered to leave an apartment complex in Milford, N.H. No deaths were reported in those states as of Wednesday.

In Connecticut, heavy rains caused the earth under a Middletown apartment complex parking lot to give way, leaving two buildings teetering over the ravine of a river. Residents were taken to an emergency shelter at a local high school.

Authorities also evacuated 50 units at a condominium complex in Jewett City in eastern Connecticut because a sewage treatment plant next door was under at least 4 feet of water. Crews were rushing to put sand bags down to try to save the $16 million facility.

In Massachusetts, the biggest concerns were in the southeastern part of the state, where a highway was closed, said state Emergency Management Agency spokesman Scott MacLeod. A bridge gave out in Freetown, isolating about 1,000 residents, he said.

Records fell across the region.

The more than 14 inches of rain that fell this month in Boston broke the previous March record of 11, according to the National Weather Service. New Jersey and parts of New York City also set March records. And by Tuesday afternoon, Providence had recorded more than 15 inches of rain in March, becoming the rainiest of any month on record.

Cranston Mayor Allan Fung told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday that the city was facing “dire circumstances.” A sewer pump station gave out early Wednesday, and about 130 homes had been evacuated. Warwick also was urging residents to conserve water because of a failed sewer treatment facility.

In one water-weary neighborhood along the Pawtuxet River in Cranston, basements were flooded by early Tuesday morning as water levels approached waist-deep levels toward the end of the street. One resident hung a sign: “FEMA + State + City of Cranston. Buy our houses.”

“Right now it’s bad and getting worse,” said Brian Dupont, a real estate broker who owns two homes on the street. He feared the dozens of sandbags protecting the homes would offer minimal protection.

Standing water pooled on or rushed across roads in the region, making driving treacherous and forcing closures. Adjutant General Robert Bray, the commander of the Rhode Island National Guard, said the area south of Providence was like a “maze” with drivers repeatedly getting stuck.

In Maine, a dam in Porter let loose Tuesday morning, sending a torrent of water down country roads. No evacuations or injuries were reported.

North of New York City, a man in his 70s drove past a barricade onto a flooded section of the Bronx River Parkway and had to be rescued from the roof of his truck, Westchester County police said. On Long Island, rain coupled with tides inundated a 20-mile stretch of oceanfront road in Southampton.

In northeastern Pennsylvania, colder temperatures turned the storm into a surprise spring snowfall. Snowfall, which totaled more than 4 inches in some areas, caused dozens of car accidents, including a fatal crash in which a woman in her 20s lost control of her car on a snow-covered road in Dorrance Township. Hard money training.