At least 2 killed in two Somalia bomb blasts

2015-01-02 18:27
 

Mogadishu - At least one person was killed when a bomb went off outside a school in northern Somalia on Friday, while a separate blast killed one person in the capital Mogadishu.

The first explosion took place outside Yameys Secondary School in the town of Galkayo in Somalia's volatile Puntland State, about 750km north of Mogadishu.

Two Kenyan and three Somali nationals, who worked as teachers at the school, were wounded, according to Puntland officials.

In a separate attack, one person was killed by a car bomb in Mogadishu's Hodan district, police officer Mohamed Dahir told dpa.

"It is hard to identify him. So far we know that the driver was a male person," said Dahir.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks.

SAPA

Indian police arrest three for gang rape

2015-01-03 07:16
 

Patna - Police say they have arrested three Indians for allegedly gang raping a young Japanese research scholar in a Buddhist pilgrimage centre in eastern India.

Police officer Akhilesh Singh says police are looking for two more suspects who also allegedly kept the Japanese woman as a hostage for nearly two weeks in Bodh Gaya, a town nearly 130km south of Patna, the capital of Bihar state.

She managed to escape from their captivity on 26 December and reached Kolkata, once known as Calcutta, where she was based and filed a police complaint.

India has a long history of tolerance of sexual violence.
But a series of high-profile rape cases have triggered a strong public outrage in recent years, leading to tough anti-rape laws.

AP

17 soldiers, 1 civilian, killed in southern Libya

2015-01-03 07:17
 

Cairo - A Libyan army spokesperson says armed militants have shot and killed 17 soldiers and one civilian at a checkpoint.

Mohammed Hegazi told The Associated Press that the attack occurred early on Friday in the central district of Jufra. He blamed the attacks on "terrorists roaming the desert areas freely".

Widespread militia violence has plunged Libya into chaos less than four years after a Nato-backed uprising toppled and killed long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Islamic extremist militias are battling troops in the second largest city of Benghazi in the west. Other militias have taken over the eastern city of Darna and the capital Tripoli.
AP

Doomed AirAsia flight schedule unauthorised – official

2015-01-03 08:26
 

Jakarta - The AirAsia plane that crashed last weekend was flying on an unauthorised schedule, Indonesia's transport ministry said on Saturday, adding it had now frozen the airline's permission to fly the route.
Flight QZ8501 crashed into the Java Sea with 162 people on board en route from Indonesia's second city Surabaya to Singapore early Sunday, at a flight time that had not been cleared by officials, said director general of air transport Djoko Murjatmodjo.

"It violated the route permit given, the schedule given, that's the problem," he told AFP.
"AirAsia's permit for the route has been frozen because it violated the route permit given."
He said the permit would be frozen until investigations were completed.

A statement from transport ministry spokesperson JA Barata said AirAsia was not permitted to fly the Surabaya-Singapore route on Sundays and had not asked to change its schedule.

Debris
Search teams have narrowed their hunt for the plane's fuselage and remaining bodies from the crash of the Airbus A320-200, with foreign investigators helping to pinpoint its black boxes, crucial to determining the cause of the crash off the island of Borneo.

Rough weather has in recent days hampered the search for the plane, which is believed to be in relatively shallow water of around 25-32m. So far 30 bodies and various items of debris have been recovered.
The search is now focused on an area of 45 by 35 nautical miles centred about 75 nautical miles southwest of Pangkalan Bun, a town in Central Kalimantan on Borneo.

The families of victims have been preparing funerals as the bodies recovered are identified in Surabaya, where a crisis centre has been set up at a police hospital with facilities to store 150 bodies.

Before take-off, the pilot of Flight QZ8501 had asked for permission to fly at a higher altitude to avoid a storm, but the request was not approved due to other planes above him on the popular route, according to AirNav, Indonesia's air traffic control.

In his last communication shortly before all contact was lost, he said he wanted to change course to avoid the menacing storm system.
AFP

Firefighters find black box on still-burning ferry

2015-01-03 09:32
 

Brindisi - Wearing gas masks against the smoke, Italian firefighters and investigators boarded the charred Norman Atlantic ferry on Friday and retrieved a data recorder they hope will help them discover what caused a deadly blaze.

But with some parts of the ferry still burning, they emerged hours later to admit they had to put off for at least a day the search for any more bodies in the maritime disaster that has already killed 11 people. The team will attempt to go back on board on Saturday.

Greece says 19 people are still unaccounted for after a fire broke out on Sunday as the ferry travelled from Greece to Italy, and disputes Italian claims of a higher number of missing. Italy says 477 passengers and crew were rescued from the burning ferry, most by helicopters operating in gale-force winds.

Both nations fear the ferry car deck where the fire started could contain more bodies, possibly those of unregistered migrants trying to slip into Italy.

'Impossible to get inside'
The badly damaged ferry was towed for 17 hours across the choppy Adriatic Sea before docking on Friday at the southern Italian port of Brindisi. A second tug was tied in with the ship to stabilize the wreck. One side of the ferry was blackened by smoke and an acrid smell was noticeable dockside.

Investigators began work on Friday by taking photos and video of the ferry's smoky interior. After several hours, prosecutor Ettore Cardinali stepped back ashore, took off the dust-filtering mask covering his nose and mouth, and told reporters the team couldn't get into the crucial car deck.

"For the time being, it is unfortunately impossible to get inside ... for safety reasons, we cannot verity firsthand what's inside," he said.

But he did say investigators had retrieved the black box recorder and promised to extract data from it.

Captain under investigation
Firefighters say they will not start searching for bodies until the blaze is fully extinguished - and could not give an estimate of when that would be.

"There are cars and trucks and other things that are still slowly burning, which ... could still go ahead for a long time," Brindisi Fire Commander Michele Angiuli told reporters.

Four more people, meanwhile, were put under investigation on Friday by the prosecutor's office in Bari. In addition to the ship's captain and the head of the company that built the ferry - both Italians - two other crew members and two representatives of the Greek ferry line Anek, which rented the Norman Atlantic, are under investigation, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

Italian newspapers, reportedly quoting from transcripts of the captain's questioning on Wednesday, said Capt. Argilio Giacomazzi told prosecutors that crews didn't properly follow his orders in lowering the lifeboats and that the car deck had too many vehicles.

Bari prosecutors have declined to say what the captain said, citing laws governing investigations.
Italian TV said passengers noted that five crewmen were in the only lifeboat launched, in apparent violation of rules that say only three crew members should go with the evacuated passengers.

Fears about migrants hidden on the huge ferry are based on reality. In 2014, Italy says it rescued or discovered some 170 000 migrants and asylum seekers at sea as they tried to slip into Europe.
AP

Prison sex assault of girl, 8, fuels anger in Philippines

2015-01-03 10:02
 

Manila - An 8-year-old girl was sexually assaulted in a toilet at a notorious Philippine prison, officials said on Saturday, fuelling a national uproar over revelations that its inmates were "living like kings" with stripper bars and jacuzzis.

The girl, who was visiting her inmate father at Bilibid prison in suburban Manila on New Year's Day, was found sprawled on the bathroom floor, naked from the waist down and with a rope tied around her neck, officials said. Initial medical tests did not indicate that she had been raped.

"The incident involving the eight-year-old is nothing short of deplorable," presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte told AFP.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said an inmate had confessed to attacking the girl and would face additional criminal charges.

"He rendered her unconscious, strangled with the intention of raping her," de Lima told local broadcaster ABS-CBN.

Prison 'villas' for crime lords
The assault came three weeks after a police raid of the prison found stashes of drugs, cash and guns - as well as sex dolls, a stripper bar and a jacuzzi - spread across an astonishing network of air-conditioned "villas" built for powerful crime lords.

One inmate, bank robbery gang leader Herbert Colanggo, had a recording studio in his villa, where he made a full album of love ballads.

Colanggo's YouTube posts also revealed that he staged elaborate shows inside the prison gymnasium where he was cheered by crowds waving pink pom-poms.

"We are trembling with anger. We are sick and tired of this system," Dante Jimenez, chairman of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, told AFP.

Reputation for corruption
Jimenez called on President Benigno Aquino to overhaul the entire prison system and transfer Bilibid to an island, similar to the former maximum-security prison on Alcatraz in the US.
"They should be surrounded by sharks and crocodiles," he said.

Bilibid, the nation's biggest prison, is infamous for overcrowding and brutal conditions - it was built to accommodate 8 900 inmates but currently houses more than 23 000.

Philippine jails have long had a reputation for corruption, but the scale of privileges enjoyed by kingpins at Bilibid shocked the nation.

The government is "taking measures to stop any and all possible criminal acts inside the penitentiary", Valte said.
AFP

Gambia troops go door-to-door in search of failed coup plotters

2015-01-03 10:01
 

Banjul - Gambian security forces went door-to-door in the capital Banjul on Friday in search of participants in a failed coup against the west African country's strongman President Yahya Jammeh, residents said.
Witnesses said the troops, who also set up checkpoints on roads leading out of the coastal city, were searching for suspects from Tuesday's assault on the presidential palace.

The attack, which was repelled by the security forces, took place while Jammeh was on a private visit to Dubai, diplomatic and military sources said.

"Gambian soldiers carrying guns are conducting a house-to-house," a woman living in Banjul told AFP, asking not to be identified. "They believe the attackers are still hiding in the capital."
Residents in other neighbourhoods also reported houses being searched.

Climate of fear
A fisherman, who also requested anonymity because of the climate of fear in the city, said he had been warned by relatives not to head back with his catch to the usual dock outside Banjul because "members of the armed forces and the paramilitary are lying in ambush in the creeks at Denton bridge and Old Jeshwang".
Military and government officials were not available for comment.

An intelligence services source said on Thursday that dozens of people had been arrested in connection with the pre-dawn attack, which was carried out by heavily armed men travelling by boat.

Gambian military sources said the coup was led by a captain who deserted the army and who was killed along with two other assailants.

Four officers suspected of participating in the attempt have taken refuge in the neighbouring west African nation of Guinea-Bissau, a military source told AFP.

Human rights violations
Jammeh, 49, who himself took power in a coup, has ruled the tiny country which runs along the Gambia river for 20 years.

His presidency has been dogged by accusations of human rights violations and analysts have warned Tuesday's attack could be used as justification for a clampdown.

On Thursday he accused unidentified foreign forces of attempting to unseat him and insisted that his army was "very loyal".

"This was not a coup. This was an attack by a terrorist group backed by some powers that I would not name," he said.

The UN's west Africa envoy, Mohammed Ibn Chambas, condemned the "attempt to seize power through unconstitutional means".

Ibn Chambas, who is due to visit Gambia soon, called on the security forces "to ensure that the investigations are conducted in full respect of human rights and regular legal process".
AFP