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5 Al-Qaida members held in Pak |
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| 1.26 lakh left homeless as earthquake hits China Beijing, August 12 China has deployed army to conduct relief operations in the quake-hit Ludian county in the mountainous Yunnan province where over 1.26 lakh people are left homeless and nearly 600 wounded, a latest report said. Sobhraj sentenced to life imprisonment
Attacker of Aziz identified
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Najaf clashes leave 165 dead Najaf (Iraq), August 12 US jets screeched overhead as massive explosions, tank and machine-gun fire boomed through the holy city and smoke spewed into the air above its historic centre, home to the Imam Ali shrine, revered by Shiites all over the world. By mid-morning, US troops and Iraqi security forces had sealed approaches to the mausoleum, as hundreds of petrified residents, fled through the dusty streets. Armed militiamen fanned out into the deserted plaza outside the shrine, as the mosques urged the Mehdi army to defy the onslaught and defend the city, while US tanks took up position on roads leading to the mausoleum. The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi issued a statement assuring that the holy shrine would remain safe and said he had not approved the entry of multinational forces into the mausoleum. “His excellency is holding the armed elements inside the shrine responsible for any harm or damage that may occur,” it said. Shortly after the attack began, Najaf Deputy Governor Jawdat Kadam Najem al-Kuraishi resigned in protest against “all the US terrorist operations that they were doing against this holy city”. In the British-controlled southern oil city of Basra, up to 8,000 men protested against US attacks on holy cities, held aloft pictures of Sadr and denounced Allawi. Further north in Kut, which fell briefly to the Mehdi army in Sadr’s spring uprising against the US-led occupation, heavy overnight US bombing killed 75 persons and wounded 148, the health ministry said. The police said US planes pounded the southern Al-Shakia district, a densely populated Mehdi army stronghold, for two hours overnight, but medics said many of the dead were women and children. The bombs also flattened the local office of Sadr’s movement, which a partisan said was empty at the time, following a day of fierce clashes between Iraqi security forces and insurgents. Sadr’s uprising, which has fanned out across Shiite cities south of Najaf and led to a British assualt on Medhi army strongholds in Amara, has also forced the closure of a southern oil pipeline, halving Iraq’s crude exports. Meanwhile, two US marines were killed when a helicopter crashed in the volatile north-western province of Al-Anbar late yesterday.
— AFP |
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Iran tests missile Canberra, August 12 |
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5 Al-Qaida members held in Pak Islamabad, August 12 He said the arrests were made during raids in different parts of the country and that the detainees were being questioned in an effort to capture other Al-Qaida members. “Our forces raided some places in the past two days and captured five terrorists, including foreigners, who are valuable targets,” said the official, who did not want to be named. Pakistan’s Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed confirmed the arrests, but refused to share any further details. The official would not name the suspects or give their nationalities and it wasn’t clear if any were on the FBI list of most-wanted terrorists. An intelligence official said the latest five arrests were made on an information gleaned from some terror suspects who were captured in recent weeks. He said the five were “definitely Al-Qaida men,” but declined to say how senior they were. — AP |
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1.26 lakh left homeless as earthquake hits China Beijing, August 12 Four persons were confirmed dead and 594 injured, 167 of them seriously, in the quake which jolted Ludian county in Zhaotong city of south-west China’s Yunnan on Tuesday night, Mayor of Zhaotong city, Deng Xianpei said. The quake, measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale, also left 1,26,234 locals homeless, as a total of 18,556 houses collapsed and another 65,601 houses were left with cracks or damages. Tens of thousands of residents had to spend the night outside their shattered homes in the area while local hospitals were jampacked with injured people, television reports from the area said. Meanwhile, the Chinese Government has rushed relief materials to the quake-hit area and the Red Cross is also moving aid to the quake-prone region. Ludian County, which has a population of 3.7 lakh, was the most seriously affected.
— PTI |
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Sobhraj sentenced to life imprisonment Kathmandu, August 12 Awarding the sentence to Sobhraj (60), for the murder of Konizo Brohich here, Kathmandu District Court Judge Bishwombhar Prasad Shrestha also ordered confiscation of any property owned by him in Nepal. Sobhraj, a French national, said he was innocent and would appeal the verdict. He said he had never visited Nepal before 2003. “I am shocked by the verdict because it was a trial without any witness,” he told reporters at the end of a three-hour hearing and the verdict. “I have been declared guilty without proof.” Until today, he had never been convicted of murder though he had been accused of over 20 killings in India, Thailand, Nepal, Turkey and Iran. He had also spent 20 years in jail in India for drugging and robbing tourists before he was deported to France in 1997. Sobhraj, known as “the serpent” for his talent for disguise and escape, resurfaced in Kathmandu in September last year and was arrested at a casino in Durbarmarg here.
— PTI |
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Attacker of Aziz identified Islamabad, August 12 “We have reached those behind attack on Shaukat Aziz. However, it is not proper to divulge details at this stage,” Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said yesterday. — PTI |
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