21 Jan 2012

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IPT IO N SC R SU B

SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 2012

Rushdie pulls out of literary festival amid death threats

SAFAR 27, 1433 AH

Photo industry mourns Kodak

No: 15335

E Guinea, Libya kick off African Cup of Nations

150 Fils

9Ten NATO 31 soldiers 45 die in Afghanistan Rogue soldier kills 4; 6 die as copter crashes

Max 10º Min 01º

in the

news

Crocodile swallows girl KUPANG: A wild crocodile swallowed a 10-year-old girl while she played in a river with her father in eastern Indonesia, the second death in the same place in two months, a local official said yesterday. The girl was swimming in Wailolong river on Thursday when the large crocodile suddenly appeared, swallowed her instantly and disappeared into the water, said Viktor Mado Waton, Lembata district head in East Nusa Tenggara province. “They only found the girl’s clothes three hours after the incident, some 200 meters away from the attack site,” he said, adding that her family members were still trying to find the body. “Her father saw this shocking scene as he was only five meters away in the water.” He said the father and the girl’s teenage brother were hunting turtles in the river while she was playing. A 12-year-old boy was killed and eaten by a crocodile in the same river in early December when he was playing with his friends, Waton said.

47 killed in Mali BAMAKO: Mali’s army says 47 people were killed in clashes with a new Tuareg rebel group, whose members include former pro-Gaddafi fighters. A statement from spokesman Col Idrissa Traore says 35 attackers and one member of the armed forces died in fighting around the town of Aguelhok and 10 attackers and one government solider died in the town of Tessalit. There was no way to independently confirm the report. The National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad said it launched the attacks this week, breaking two years of relative peace. Members of the Tuareg ethnic group live in several nations in northwest Africa.

Stealing baby from womb JOHANNESBURG: A South African woman was to appear in court yesterday for murder over allegations that she sliced open a pregnant woman, kidnapped the baby and left the mother for dead, police said. The 29-year-old woman from Randfontein, west of Johannesburg, had pretended to be pregnant before she attacked the expectant mother and ripped her baby out of her womb a week ago. “The stomach of a 34-year-old woman was cut open with a sharp object and her baby taken out,” police spokeswoman Appel Ernst said. “The suspect was later arrested after she (showed) up at a clinic with a newborn baby with a cut on its head,” she said. The baby is doing well in hospital, but the mother did not survive. “This is an unusual case. Initial investigation has suggested that the mother had bled to death while giving birth,” Ernst said. Television images showed crowds of angry protesters who had gathered outside the Randfontein Magistrate Court where the woman was due appear.

KANDAHAR: US soldiers with the NATO led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) inspect the scene of a suicide attack in Kandahar south of Kabul. — AP KABUL: The gunning down of four unarmed French soldiers by an Afghan colleague yesterday underscores the difficulties facing NATO troops as they prepare to pull out of the war-torn country, analysts say. Another 15 French soldiers were wounded in the attack in their base in eastern Afghanistan as they ended a work-out session, prompting a furious response from French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He said he would consider pulling French troops out of Afghanistan earlier than planned and suspended military training of Afghan troops-a crucial element in plans for a 2014 pull-out by US-led NATO forces. The whole basis for the withdrawal of some 130,000 foreign troops is that Afghan security forces will be trained to take over responsibility for defending their country against an insurgency by hardline Taleban Islamists. Sarkozy’s suspension of the training of Afghan soldiers and threat to pull out his troops early could be a problem for the other nations involved in the US-led coalition fighting the Taleban, said analyst Kate Clark. “No nation’s forces are anywhere comparable to the Americans, but relative to everyone else the French are a relatively big contingent so this is important,” said Clark, of the Afghanistan Analysts’ Network. “You can understand why the French feel like this, but at the same time it doesn’t look good having one nation talking about pulling out early.” She said attacks by Afghan soldiers on their foreign counterparts were seldom ideological but stemmed from personal antagonism and arguments. “The drive to rapidly increase the size of the (Afghan) army also causes strains in the system,” she said. The Afghan army and police together have grown from around 190,000 in late 2009 to more than 305,000, as part of plans designed to peak combined numbers at 352,000 by November. The Taleban, ousted from power by a 2001 US-

led invasion after the attacks on New York and Washington, gleefully leapt on Sarkozy’s reaction, claiming the French president had “ordered a halt to the mission of his invading forces”. In another development, a NATO helicopter has crashed in southern Afghanistan, killing six members of the international military force, the US-led coalition said yesterday. The cause is still being investigated, but a coalition statement said there was no enemy activity in the area at the time of Thursday’s crash, which brought the number of international forces killed in Afghanistan this month to 24. The coalition did not disclose the nationalities of those killed and would not release details of the crash until the families of the dead were notified. It was the deadliest crash in Afghanistan since August, when 30 American troops died after a Chinook helicopter was apparently shot down in Wardak province in the center of the country. Thursday’s crash occurred on the same day that a suicide car bomber killed at least seven civilians outside a crowded gate at Kandahar Air Field, a sprawling base for US and NATO operations in the south. The Taleban insurgents claimed responsibility, saying they were targeting a NATO convoy. It was the second suicide bombing in as many days in southern Afghanistan, officials said. The coalition said no NATO troops were killed Thursday. It does not disclose information about wounded troops. The Taleban have been stepping up attacks in southern Afghanistan, the birthplace of the insurgency, with a wave of bombings and the assassinations of three local Afghan officials this week. The violence comes even as the US is moving ahead with plans for negotiating with the Taleban to try to end the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan. — Agencies


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