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Indonesia’s Mount Merapi volcano erupted with renewed ferocity on Friday, killing another 39 people and blanketing the surrounding area with ash.

Ten days of eruptions have now killed more than 80 people and forced the evacuation of more than 75,000 people.

Mount Merapi, on the outskirts of Yogyakarta city in Central Java, began spewing deadly clouds of ash and superheated gas last week.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the director of disaster risk reduction at the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, said the death toll had climbed significantly in the last 24 hours.

“Because of today’s eruption, we found 39 bodies, so the total death toll is 83, and another 66 have been injured, so the total number of injured is 185 people,” he told Reuters.

A column of ash billowed at least 4 km above the crater of Mount Merapi as worried authorities evacuated villages within a 20 km radius of the volcano, said the country’s top vulcanologist, Surono.

“It’s much worse than in the past. We cannot predict its behavior,” he said.

A Reuters photographer near the volcano said he saw blackened burn victims being carried into the Sardjito hospital on Friday morning.

“Their clothes had melted onto their skin,” he said.

The air in Yogykarta is now so thick with ash that motorists must drive with their headlights on during the day, he said.

“We can’t see anything, it’s very dark. The trees are all white with ash,” he said. “It’s like it’s raining sand.”

Indonesia is also struggling with the aftermath of a tsunami in the remote Mentawai islands off Sumatra last week that killed at least 431.

By reuters

Indonesia's Mount Merapi volcano erupted with renewed ferocity on Friday.

Soldiers loaded men, women and crying children into trucks as rocks and debris hurled in the air and down the mountain’s slopes. The danger zone was widened from 10 kilometers from the glowing crater to 15 kilometers.

Indonesia’s deadly volcano erupted on Wednesday with its biggest blast yet, shooting searing ash miles into the sky and forcing the hasty evacuations of panicked villagers and emergency shelters near the base of the mountain.

Soldiers loaded men, women and crying children into trucks as rocks and debris hurled in the air and down the mountain’s slopes. No new casualties were reported immediately after the booming explosion that lasted more than an hour.

“This is an extraordinary eruption, triple from the first” on Oct. 26, said Mr Surono, a state volcanologist.

Tens of thousands of villagers have been evacuated from Mount Merapi, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, since it began erupting just over a week ago, killing 38 people, most from severe burns.

The danger zone was widened on Wednesday from 10 kilometers from the glowing crater to 15 kilometers because of the heightened threat.

“I (didn’t) think of anything else except to save my wife and son. We left my house and everything,” said Tentrem Wahono, 50, who lives in Kaliurang village, about 10 kilometers from the peak. He and his family fled on a motorbike, “racing with the explosive sounds as the searing ash chased us from behind.”

The last eruption has raised Merapi’s status to “crisis” condition, said Andi Arief, a special staff at the presidential office dealing with disaster and social assistance.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago of 235 million people, is prone to earthquakes and volcanos because it sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped string of faults that lines the Pacific.

As a reminder of that, a 6.1-magnitude quake hit waters off the eastern province of Papua on Wednesday evening, rattling several villages but causing no known damage or casualties.

The volcano’s initial blast on Oct. 26 occurred less than 24 hours after a towering tsunami slammed into remote islands on the western end of the country, sweeping entire villages to sea and killing at least 428 people. In both cases, relief operations are expected to take weeks, possibly months.

By thehindu.com

Mount Merapi pyroclastic flow as it erupts as seen from Deles, Central Java, Indonesia on tuesday.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited the tsunami-hit islands

Hopes are fading for more than 300 people still registered missing after Monday’s tsunami in Indonesia, as the death toll climbs to 394.

Disaster official Ade Edward says the 3m (10ft) surge is likely to have carried many of the missing out to sea, or buried them in the sand.

The first major aid ships reached the worst-hit Mentawai Islands on Thursday.

The government has pledged millions of dollars for the relief effort, but activists say more needs to be done.

Aid agencies said people on the islands still urgently needed to food and shelter, three days after a 7.7-magnitude undersea earthquake triggered the tsunami.

Indonesia is also struggling with the devastation caused by this week’s eruption of Mount Merapi in central Java, which killed more than 30 people.

As the scale of the tsunami disaster became clear on Thursday, Mr Edward painted a bleak picture of the chances of finding more survivors.

“Of those missing people we think two-thirds of them are probably dead, either swept out to sea or buried in the sand,” he told the AFP news agency.

“When we flew over the area yesterday we saw many bodies. Heads and legs were sticking out of the sand, some of them were in the trees.”

He estimated that a further 200 people may have been killed.

Indonesia’s state-run news agency Antara reported that 468 houses had been completely destroyed by the wave.

Village chief Tasmin Saogo told the BBC’s Indonesian service that the islanders have begun to bury their dead.

“In the village of Sadegugung, there aren’t any body bags. In the end we just lifted them and we buried 95 people today,” he said.

“There are still may bodies lying about, underneath coconut trees and in other places.”

Meanwhile, the party of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has been trying to defuse a growing political row over comments made by one of its senior members

In comments translated on the Jakarta Globe website, House of Representatives Speaker Marzuki Ali suggested relocating people living next the sea, adding: “Anyone who is afraid of waves shouldn’t live near seashore.”

Rival politicians criticised his statement as insensitive, and the party has apologised.

Earlier, Mr Yudhoyono cut short a trip to Vietnam to oversee the rescue effort, flying in a helicopter loaded with food and other basic necessities to the remote and inaccessible islands.

Indonesian officials said locals had been given no indication of the coming wave, as a high-tech tsunami warning system installed in the wake of 2004’s giant Indian Ocean tsunami was not working.

The vast Indonesian archipelago sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, one of the world’s most active areas for earthquakes and volcanoes.

More than 1,000 people were killed by an earthquake off Sumatra in September 2009.

In December 2004, a 9.1-magnitude quake off the coast of Aceh triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed a quarter of a million people in 13 countries including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand.

By bbc.co.uk

Survivors have been moved into temporary shelters

The death toll from a tsunami that slammed the Mantawai islands off Indonesia’s Sumatra two days ago may rise as rescue agencies struggle with disrupted telecommunications and difficult search conditions.

At least 113 people were killed and 150 others missing, Mujiharto, head of the crisis center at the Health Ministry, said in a mobile-phone text message last night. The National Disaster Management Agency said 31 people were confirmed dead and 174 missing as of late yesterday. The agency received its information from the regional disaster office on Sumatra, Maryadi, a spokesman at the national agency, said by phone.

“The numbers may be different because information is coming in remotely at different times,” Mujiharto said today by phone in Jakarta.

The 7.5-magnitude temblor struck the Kepulauan Mentawai region of Indonesia, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) from Padang, the provincial capital of West Sumatra, and 640 kilometers from Singapore at 9:42 p.m. local time Oct. 25, the US Geological Survey said. The quake triggered a 3-meter (10- foot) tsunami that that reached 400 meters inland, the agency said yesterday.

A 7.6-magnitude earthquake in the same area in October 2009 left more than 1,000 people dead in Padang, many of whom were buried in mudslides and the rubble of collapses buildings. Less than a month earlier, a magnitude-7 temblor south of Java on Sept. 2 left 82 people dead.

A tsunami generated by a magnitude-9.1 earthquake off northern Sumatra in December 2004 left about 220,000 people dead or missing in 12 countries around the Indian Ocean.

By bloomberg.com

Women and children flee to higher ground in Padang, West Sumatra, on Oct. 25. Photographer: Rus Akbar/AFP/Getty Images

MULTAN, Pakistan — A bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded at the gate of a famous Sufi shrine in central Pakistan during morning prayers Monday, killing at least five people, officials said.

The blast at the Farid Shakar Ganj shrine in Punjab province was the latest in a string of attacks targeting Sufi shrines in Pakistan. Islamist militants often target Sufis, whose mystical practices clash with their hardline interpretation of Islam.

The dead from Monday’s blast included at least one woman, said Maher Aslam Hayat, a senior government official in the Pak Pattan district where the shrine is located. At least 13 others were wounded in the explosion, he said.

The bombing significantly damaged a row of shops outside the shrine, said Hayat. But the shrine itself, which is dedicated to a 12th century Sufi saint, was largely undamaged, he said.

Local TV footage showed the twisted and charred body of the motorcycle on which the bomb was planted. It also showed large piles of broken wood and chunks of concrete from the shops damaged by the blast.

After the attack, a top Sufi scholar, Mufti Muneebur Rehman, criticized the government for not doing enough to protect the Sufi population. Pakistan is 95 percent Muslim, and the majority practice Sufi-influenced Islam.

“Our rulers are too busy serving foreign masters and have not prioritized protecting the people and sacred places from terrorists,” said Rehman.

Earlier this month, two suspected suicide bombers attacked a beloved Sufi shrine in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, killing at least eight people and wounding 65 others.

A suicide attack in July killed 47 people at the nation’s most revered Sufi shrine, Data Darbar in the eastern city of Lahore. That attack infuriated many Pakistanis, who saw it as an unjustified assault on peaceful civilians.

The government has waged a sustained military campaign against militants based in its semiautonomous tribal region along the Afghan border who have declared war against the Pakistani state. But militant violence remains a problem.

A roadside bomb struck a passenger van in the Orakzai tribal region on Monday, killing three people and wounding two others, said Aurangzeb Khan, a local government administrator. The blast tore apart the vehicle, which was passing near the village of Tanda.

The Pakistani military declared victory in Orakzai in June after pounding Taliban militants in the area for months with airstrikes and artillery. But militant attacks and military operations in the area have continued.

Army helicopter gunships pounded suspected militant hideouts in Orakzai on Sunday, killing 15 alleged insurgents, said Jehanzeb Khan, another local government official.

By foxnews.com

Oct. 25, 2010: In this photo released by China's Xinhua news agency, people gather at the blast site in Pak Pattan, a city in Pakistan's Punjab province, early Monday morning

Gunmen sprayed bullets into a family birthday party in the violent Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, killing 13 people and wounding 20, authorities said on Saturday.

It was the second massacre at a party this month in Ciudad Juarez, which borders El Paso, Texas, and is one of the world’s most violent cities as drug cartels battle security forces and each other over smuggling routes into the United States.

“I threw myself down on the floor and then a lot of other people piled on top of me,” a young man who survived the shooting late on Friday told Reuters, declining to give his name out of fear of reprisals.

The celebration was for a boy’s 15th birthday, he said.

At least four of the people killed at the house party were teenagers and a 9-year-old boy was among the wounded, officials said.

“A group of heavily armed men arrived in two minivans. At least 10 men burst into the party,” Carlos Gonzalez, a spokesman for state prosecutors, told the Reforma newspaper.

It was not clear whether the shooting was related to Mexico’s drug war, which has killed more than 6,900 people in Ciudad Juarez alone since early 2008.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon condemned the shooting, saying it caused “deep outrage.”

Calderon is under pressure to show the military-led campaign he launched against the powerful drug cartels in December 2006 is working. With the death toll at nearly 30,000 people over the last four years, Washington and foreign investors are on edge as the violence escalates.

On Saturday, a man used buckets of water and a broom to clean the blood-stained patio where the gunmen opened fire.

“I don’t know what happened. I was here with my son, who is a boy,” said the man, who declined to be identified.

Earlier this month in Ciudad Juarez, gunmen raided a party and killed six people. After that shooting, Calderon flew to the city to inaugurate parks and hospitals as part of the government’s plan to increase social spending and rebuild the depressed city.

By reuters.com

Forensic workers carry a body at a crime scene in Ciudad Juarez October 23, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Gael Gonzalez

An outbreak of severe diarrhea in rural central Haiti has killed at least 135 people and sickened hundreds more who overwhelmed a crowded hospital Thursday seeking treatment.

Hundreds of patients lay on blankets in a parking lot outside St. Nicholas hospital in the port city of St. Marc with IVs in their arms for rehydration. As rain began to fall in the afternoon, nurses rushed to carry them inside.

Doctors were testing for cholera, typhoid and other illnesses in the Caribbean country’s deadliest outbreak since a January earthquake that killed as many as 300,000 people.

“What we know is that people have diarrhea, and they are vomiting, and [they] can go quickly if they are not seen in time,” said Catherine Huck, country deputy for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. She said doctors were still awaiting lab results to pinpoint the cause.

The president of the Haitian Medical Association, Claude Surena, said his unofficial count based on information from doctors and hospitals in the region indicated as many as 135 people had died and 1,500 were infected. He said the cause appeared to be cholera, but that had not been confirmed by the government.

“The concern is that it could go from one place to another place, and it could affect more people or move from one region to another one,” he said.

Cholera, a bacterial infection that spreads through contaminated water, causes severe diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to dehydration and death within hours. Treatment involves administering a salt- and sugar-based rehydration serum.

Drank from public canal

The sick at St. Nicholas hospital have come from across Haiti’s rural Artibonite region, which did not experience significant damage in the Jan. 12 quake but has absorbed thousands of refugees from the devastated capital, Port-au-Prince, 70 kilometres south of St. Marc. Government figures list a total of 54 people dead and 619 ill, said Yolaine Surena, a co-ordinator for Haiti’s civil protection department.

Some patients said they drank water from a public canal, while others said they bought purified water. All complained of symptoms including fever, vomiting and severe diarrhea.

“I ran to the bathroom four times last night vomiting,” said 70-year-old Belismene Jean Baptiste.

Trucks loaded with medical supplies, including rehydration salts, were to be sent from Port-au-Prince to the hospital, said Jessica DuPlessis, a UN spokeswoman. Doctors at the hospital said they also needed more personnel to handle the flood of patients.

Elyneth Tranckil was among dozens of relatives standing outside the hospital gate as new patients arrived near death.

“Police have blocked the entry to the hospital, so I can’t get in to see my wife,” Tranckil said.

The U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince issued an advisory urging people to drink only bottled or boiled water and eat only food that has been thoroughly cooked.

By cbc.ca

People receive rehydration serum in the parking lot of the St. Nicholas hospital in Saint Marc, Haiti, on Thursday. Health officials say an outbreak of severe diarrhea has killed at least 54 and sickened hundreds more. (Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated Press)

At least 32 killed in multiple attacks in Karachi where recent unrest is raising fears of instability.

At least 32 people have been killed in shootouts in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi, police have said.

In the deadliest attack on Tuesday, at least 13 people were shot dead when six armed men on motorbikes opened fire in the Shershah Kabari market.

“The attackers came on motorcycles and started indiscriminate firing,” Raja Riyasat, a police official, told the AFP news agency.

Several others were injured and Arif Razzaq, a second police official, said the death toll may rise as some of the wounded were in critical condition.

Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, said the scene of the attack was a scrap market normally frequented by labourers from other parts of the country.

“This would have been a busy area because in Pakistan, scrap dealers make a lot of money,” he said. “It’s a country where everyone cannot afford to buy brand new automobile parts.”

He said sporadic gunfights were ongoing in different parts of the city and had resulted 19 more deaths.

Election violence

About 60 people have been killed in Karachi since Saturday when violence erupted ahead of a by-election to replace a provincial legislator murdered in August.

It was not clear whether Tuesday’s attacks were related to that violence.

Our correspondent said the recent unrest stemmed from a political power struggle.

“For the last few months, various political parties have been battling for control of Karachi.

“The Awami National Party and MQM [Muttahida Qaumi Movement] are fighting what appears to be a turf war,” he said. The Awami National Party is MQM’s main rival for political posts and control of the city.

“The people of Karachi have been held hostage by these political groups.”

The MQM, which is the dominant political force in Karachi, has stepped up pressure on the government to stem the last days’ violence, saying its workers were among those killed.

Some sources said the MQM threatened over the weekend to pull out of the federal coalition government with the Pakistan People’s Party to protest the violence.

The move, which party sources say was put “on hold” on assurances of strong action to contain the violence, could lead to the government losing its National Assembly majority, or even its downfall if the MQM sides with the opposition.

Karachi has long been plagued by political and ethnic violence and there is concern that the city is being used as a haven for the Taliban. Some violence in the city is also linked to criminal gangs.

At the same time, Karachi is the commercial capital of Pakistan. It generates 68 per cent of the government’s revenue and 25 per cent of Pakistan’s gross domestic product.

By aljazeera.net

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Around 50 people have been killed in Karachi since Saturday when violence erupted ahead of a by-election [AFP

SHANGHAI — A coal mine explosion in central China early Saturday killed 21 workers and trapped 16 others underground, China’s state-run news media said.

The accident is the latest tragedy to hit this nation’s mining industry, one of the world’s most dangerous.

The official Xinhua News Agency said rescuers were trying to reach the trapped miners after a gas explosion occurred about 6 a.m. Saturday, in the city of Yuzhou in Henan Province.

Later in the day, China Central Television said that the bodies of 21 miners had been recovered and identified but that six rescue teams were trying to reach 16 others trapped underground beneath tons of coal dust. It was not clear whether the 16 had survived the blast or how far beneath the surface they were.

Mining accidents are so common in China that they rarely make newspaper front pages. Last year, more than 2,600 people were killed in mining accidents in China. By comparison, there were only 34 mining deaths in the United States, according to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

The Chinese government has repeatedly vowed to improve the safety of mining conditions, and nearly every year safety regulators announce the closing of thousands of illegal mines, which tend to be the most dangerous.

But the mine involved in Saturday’s blast is owned by the Pingyu Coal and Electric Company, a joint venture that is at least partly state-owned.

A gas blast at a coal mine last June killed at least 47 miners in Henan Province and another killed at least 9 miners in early August in the same province, according to state-run news media.

By nytimes.com

Rescuers prepared to go underground early Saturday, trying to reach 16 miners trapped beneath tons of coal dust in Yuzhou.

Suspected U.S. unmanned aircraft launched two missiles at a vehicle in the Pakistani tribal region along the Afghan border on Friday, killing three people, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The attack was in the village of Machi Khel, near Mir Ali in North Waziristan, two officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk with the press.

The officials said the three killed have not yet been identified, but the village is known to house a mix of militants from the Afghan Taliban and local Pakistani insurgent groups.

The U.S. has sharply escalated its use of unmanned drone missile strikes targeting militants in Pakistan’s border region in the last two months.

The U.S. rarely acknowledges the covert missile programme, but officials have said privately the attacks have killed several senior Taliban and al-Qaeda commanders. Pakistan officially opposes the program but is believed to secretly support it.

The U.S. carried out 21 such strikes in September, nearly double the previous monthly record, and has already launched 16 this month including those on Friday, according to an Associated Press count.

Elsewhere in Pakistan, gunmen ambushed a truck early Friday that was returning home after delivering NATO supplies in Afghanistan, killing two people.

Local official Iqbal Khan said the truck was attacked near Jamrud in the Khyber tribal region. The driver and his assistant were killed, and the unidentified gunmen then torched the truck.

The attack was the most recent in a rash of assaults on the Pakistan supply line used to carry non-lethal goods including fuel, military vehicles, spare parts and clothing to foreign troops in landlocked Afghanistan.

Nearly 150 trucks were destroyed as they sat idle during the 11 days Pakistan closed a key border crossing in protest of a NATO helicopter strike that killed two Pakistani border guards. Pakistan reopened the route Sunday.

The U.S. and NATO at one point sent about 80 per cent of their non-lethal supplies through Pakistan into Afghanistan, but have been steadily reducing that amount. Now about 40 per cent of supplies now come through Pakistan, 40 per cent through the Central Asian routes, and 20 per cent by air.

By thehindu.com

Pakistani police officers escort arrested alleged militants to a jail in Bahawalpur, Pakistan on Thursday. Suspected U.S. unmanned air strikes killed three people, Pakistani intelligence officials said on Friday.