Negative Blogs

The United States on Monday called for tighter enforcement of UN sanctions against North Korea and for China to play a “responsible” role in easing mounting tensions in the region.

The United States will “confront the threat” posed by North Korea’s new nuclear activities and its deadly attack on its southern neighbour last week, said US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice.

A UN Security Council sanctions committee meanwhile met to discuss efforts to implement actions already ordered against the North after its nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

Signalling a tougher US line with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s regime, Ms Rice said the United States expects committee members “to intensify their important ongoing efforts to tighten sanctions enforcement.”

The sanctions include an arms embargo and actions – including an assets freeze and travel ban – taken against entities and individuals linked to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Ms Rice called last week’s attack on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong island “outrageous” and said the United States would “work with the international community to maintain peace and security in this region as we simultaneously confront the threat posed by North Korea’s ongoing nuclear activities.”

The ambassador said the United States looks “to China to play a responsible leadership role in working to maintain peace and security in that region.”

China is North Korea’s closest international ally and its main trade partner.

“It is in China’s interests, it is in the interests of the countries in the region, and we expect them to take steps that are consistent with their obligations and all of our obligations under UN Security Council resolutions,” Ms Rice told reporters.

The United States has not yet stated its position on China’s call for six- nation talks on North Korea to take place in Beijing in the coming days.

South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan had previously been in talks with North Korea seeking to end its nuclear weapons program until the North pulled out of the negotiations in April 2009.

By telegraph.co.uk

Super Hornet fighter attack aircraft is launched off the deck of the U.S. aircraft carrier, USS George Washington during the joint military exercise off South Korea's West Sea Photo: AP

INCHON, South Korea — As they left behind gutted homes, scorched trees, and rubble-strewn streets, residents of the tiny South Korean island shelled by North Korea told harrowing tales yesterday of fiery destruction and narrow escapes.

Ann Ahe-ja, one of hundreds of exhausted evacuees from Yeonpyeong Island arriving in the port of Inchon on a rescue ship, said Tuesday’s artillery barrage that killed four people — two of them civilians — had caught her by surprise.

“Over my head, a pine tree was broken and burning,’’ Ann told AP Television News. “So I thought, ‘Oh, this is not another exercise. It is a war.’ I decided to run. And I did.’’

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the shelling of the island near the two nations’ disputed maritime border one of the “gravest incidents’’ since the Korean War.

South Korean troops remained on high alert. In Washington, President Obama pledged to “stand shoulder to shoulder’’ with Seoul and called upon China to restrain its ally, North Korea.

The United States has more than 28,000 troops in South Korea to guard against North Korean aggression. The troops are a legacy of the bitter three-year conflict that ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953.

Seoul and Washington reaffirmed plans to hold joint military exercises this week in the Yellow Sea, just 70 miles south of Yeonpyeong. The White House said the aircraft carrier USS George Washington would take part.

The Obama administration urged China to press North Korea to halt provocative action, saying Beijing has a duty to tell Pyongyang that deliberate acts “specifically intended to inflame tensions in the region’’ are not acceptable.

China said late yesterday that it was highly concerned about the artillery exchange and urged restraint.

China “feels pain and regret about an incident causing deaths and property losses and is worried about the developments,’’ Hong Lei, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a statement.

Diplomats for countries on the UN Security Council said there had been no request for the 15-member council to hold a full, formal meeting about the shelling, but said some informal bilateral talks were being held.

About 10 homes suffered direct hits and 30 were destroyed in the midafternoon barrage, according to a local official who spoke by telephone from the island just seven miles from the North Korean shore. About 1,700 civilians live on Yeonpyeong alongside South Korean troops stationed there.

“I heard the sound of artillery, and I felt that something was flying over my head,’’ said Lim Jung-eun, 36, who fled the island with three children, including a 9-month-old strapped to her back. “Then the mountain caught on fire.’’

Many evacuees had spent the night in underground shelters and embraced tearful family members on arrival in Inchon.

The shower of artillery from North Korea was the first to strike a civilian population. In addition to the two marines killed, the bodies of two men, believed in their 60s, were pulled from a destroyed construction site, the coast guard said. At least 18 people — most of them troops — were injured.

The skirmish began after North Korea warned the South to stop carrying out military drills near their sea border, South Korean officials said.

When Seoul refused and fired artillery into disputed waters — away from the North Korean shore — the North retaliated by shelling Yeonpyeong.

Seoul responded by unleashing its own barrage of howitzers and scrambling its fighter jets.

North Korea, laying out its version of events, said the army warned the South several times that firing “a single shell’’ in its waters would draw a “prompt retaliatory strike.’’

In Pyongyang, residents boasted that the exchange showed off their military’s strength and ability to counter South Korean aggression.

By boston.com

Survivors of the artillery exchange arrived yesterday at the port in Inchon, South Korea, from Yeonpyeong Island. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

China’s official Xinhua News Agency said the death toll of a fire that engulfed a highrise apartment building in Shanghai, China’s business centre, has risen to 42.

Monday’s fire occurred in a building under renovation. Previous reports said at least eight people had died and more than 90 were injured.

A witness said building materials caught fire, and the blaze spread to scaffolding and then to the 28-storey building, which houses a number of retired teachers, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

More than 80 fire trucks were called to battle the blaze, Shanghai state television said, and streams of water could be seen flowing into the building, which appeared to be gutted.

The fire appeared to have been put out about six hours later, and firefighters could be seen taking bodies from the building.

Photos posted online showed a man clinging to the scaffolding. A building resident identified as Mr. Zhou told Hong Kong broadcaster Phoenix TV that he and his wife were napping in their 23rd floor apartment when they smelled smoke. He said they climbed down the scaffolding four storeys before being rescued by firefighters.

At one point, helicopters could be seen hovering over the building, and witnesses said at least one resident was rescued, but thick smoke hampered further efforts. By evening, the helicopters were gone.

A doctor at Shanghai’s Jing’an Hospital surnamed Zhang said more than 20 seriously hurt people had been admitted.

The state-run news website Eastday.com cited a construction worker surnamed Qian who escaped from the 28th floor as saying crews were installing energy-saving insulation when the fire occurred.

Qian said thick, rolling smoke clouds surrounded the building and the room she was in filled with smoke, making it difficult to breathe, the report said. She said she called the city’s emergency hot line and then used a wet towel to cover her mouth and nose as she ran down a fire escape.

By cbc.ca

More than 80 fire trucks were called to fight a fire that engulfed a highrise apartment building in Shanghai, China's business centre. (Xinhua/Associated Press)

A suicide car bomber blew himself up as a NATO convoy passed his vehicle on the outskirts of the capital on Friday, killing one civilian and wounding two troops, officials said.

NATO said one Afghan civilian was killed in the blast near the entrance to a coalition base south of Kabul. The Afghan Defense Ministry said an Afghan soldier and a NATO service member were wounded in the explosion.

The Hizb-i-Islami group that operates under the leadership of warlord and former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar claimed responsibility for the attack.

“The bombing has been carried out by one of our men,” Harun Zarghun, a spokesman for Hizb-i-Islami, told The Associated Press. “The attack is part of our campaign to oust American forces from Afghanistan.”

The attack slightly damaged a Humvee but destroyed the vehicle driven used by the suicide bomber, AP Television News footage showed.

Although suicide bomb attacks are becoming commonplace in southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan, where NATO is fighting the Taliban, increased security has made them less frequent in the capital.

In eastern Afghanistan, a NATO service member was killed in an insurgent attack, the coalition said. Neither the nationality of the service member nor any other details were released. So far this year, 626 U.S. and international troops have died in Afghanistan, according to a count by The Associated Press.

Also on Friday, the coalition killed at least seven insurgents in an airstrike on a Taliban command center in the Naw Zad district of Helmand province in the south. Afghan and NATO troops continue to battle a resilient insurgency in Helmand while Afghan officials work to improve governance and rush development into the region.

Intelligence information and tips from local citizens led the coalition to the location, which insurgents use as a meeting site. In the past few days, numerous armed insurgents had been seen coming and going from the location, the coalition said.

NATO said that on Thursday at least 15 militants were killed by in a fierce round of fighting in Helmand province and 15 more were detained during three overnight operations targeting Taliban leaders across Afghanistan.

The heavy fighting erupted in Sangin district after a member of a joint Afghan and coalition patrol was struck by a homemade bomb, the coalition said. Insurgents continued to attack as a coalition helicopter evacuated casualties. The coalition force called in air support and the insurgents were killed by missiles, a 30mm cannon and artillery fire.

Also in Helmand, a joint force captured several suspected insurgents in Musa Qala district Thursday while going after a senior Taliban leader known for trafficking in weapons and explosives.

In neighboring Kandahar province, Afghan and coalition forces detained other suspected insurgents in Panjawi district while pursuing a member of the Taliban suspected of transporting bomb parts and other weapons between Pakistan and Kandahar, the largest city in the south.

In the third operation, which was conducted in Khost province in the east, security forces also detained insurgents while looking for a member of the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network who supplies weapons, vehicles and materials to militant fighters in the area.

In total, 15 suspects were apprehended in the overnight operations, NATO said.

The coalition also reported that two Taliban bomb makers were captured Thursday in an area of Kandahar province near the Pakistan border where NATO has been trying to disrupt insurgent supply routes. Through intelligence tips, the coalition tracked the two to a compound in Spin Boldak where they were apprehended. Numerous bomb components, including detonation switches, were confiscated at the site.

Associated Press writer Asif Shahzad contributed to this report from Islamabad, Pakistan.

By kansascity.com

The destroyed remains of a vehicle used by a suicide bomber is seen as a U.S. military vehicle is being towed away after being hit by a suicide car bomber on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Nov. 12, 2010.

Experts attribute calm on northern border to Hezbollah fear of devastating response to attack on Israel that could undermine the group’s standing in Lebanon.

Hamas asked Hezbollah to fire rockets on northern Israel during Operation Cast Lead, but the Lebanese militant group refused, Maj. Gen. (res. ) Dan Harel said on Tuesday.

Harel was deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces during the 2008-2009 military offensive in Gaza.

Harel, who spent most of his career in the Artillery Corps, made the comments at the first international Conference on Fire and Combined Arms in an Urban Terrain, held at the Artillery Association headquarters in Zichron Yaakov.

Harel said the massive firepower the IDF employed against Hamas infrastructure and positions led Hamas to entirely change its “battle rationale” during Cast Lead.

“It simply avoided conflict, and IDF forces found it very difficult to locate and fight the enemy because of the force of firepower employed,” Harel said.

He said the IDF learned then that “Hamas had asked Hezbollah twice to fire rockets at the northern border, but Hezbollah decided to stay out of it.”

Hezbollah has not fired rockets at Israel since the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon War. IDF experts attribute the relative calm on the country’s northern border to Hezbollah’s fear of a devastating response to any attack on Israel that could undermine the group’s standing in Lebanon.

Harel said those who plan the military operations are more attuned than ever to the effects of warfare on civilian populations, and that Cast Lead was the first time in his military career in which operational planning included extended consideration of “legality and legitimacy.”

That planning, which involved legal experts, gave greater priority than ever before to avoiding inflicting damage upon civilian populations, he said, even though Israel was widely criticized for harming civilians during the operation.

Outgoing IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi said the first wave of IDF aerial attacks, which began December 27, 2008, destroyed more than 60 percent of Hamas’ rocket launch sites. He attributed the IDF’s heightened operational ability to an “inter-war readiness” based on precise information about Hamas infrastructure.

Still, he said, sound intelligence and long-range strikes will not be enough to win future wars, and the army will have to enhance its ability to “integrate firepower methods with ground maneuvers.”

By haaretz.com

A cloud of smoke billows over Gaza after an Israel Defense Forces strike during the 2009 war.

Israeli warplanes launched two raids on the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, Palestinians said, wounding one person hours after militants in the enclave fired a rocket into southern Israel.

Officials of the Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza and witnesses said one air raid was on the Khan Yunis area and the second targeted tunnels at Rafah used by smugglers under the territory’s border with Egypt.

One Palestinian was wounded in his home by shards of broken glass from a blast in the second raid, the sources said.

The air strikes came after Gaza-based militants fired a rocket into southern Israel earlier on Saturday, without causing either casualties or damage.

The projectile exploded in an open field near the Gaza border, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.

An Israeli army spokeswoman told AFP that the two attacks had been launched in response to the rocket fire.

Around 180 rockets and mortar shells had been fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel since the beginning of the year, she said.

By france24.com

A Hamas policeman guards a site in Gaza City after Israeli warplanes bombarded it in October 2010. Israeli warplanes launched two raids on the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, Palestinians said, wounding one person hours after militants in the enclave fired a rocket into southern Israel.

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

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

“]

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

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.

More than five years after the attacks brought terror to the capital, bereaved families will finally have the chance to ask officials questions about whether their loved ones could have been saved.

The inquest, which gets under way at the Royal Courts of Justice today, will have a wide-ranging remit to examine whether the emergency services’ response was adequate and whether MI5 and the police could have prevented the 2005 atrocities.

Four suicide bombers armed with home-made explosives packed into rucksacks launched co-ordinated attacks on three Tube trains and a bus on July 7, 2005, in Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity since the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

It has taken so long to hold the inquests because they could not start until after the trial of three men accused of helping the attackers choose their targets.

The trio were cleared of the charge at Kingston Crown Court last year, although two of them were convicted of conspiracy to attend a terrorist training camp.

Lady Justice Hallett, who will chair the inquest, is sitting without a jury.

She has already ruled the proceedings will have a wide remit, examining all four bombing scenes to determine whether more could have been done to save the victims at each bomb site.

By foxnews.com

In this July 7, 2005 file photo, a forensic officer walks next to the wreckage of a double decker bus with its top blown off and damaged cars scattered on the road at Tavistock Square in central London.