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<B>MOGADISHU.</B> Somali pro-government militias seize buildings in capital. Militias allied to the Somali government captured several key buildings including the former presidential palace in Mogadishu yesterday, a spokesman for the Somali National Alliance (SNA) faction said.
“We have taken over Villa Somalia”, Abukar Osman Sheikh told Reuters. “Now the Islamists have left Mogadishu, we rightfully took over all the places we used to control including the presidential palace.” The SNA belongs to former faction leader Hussein Mohamed Aideed, now interior minister and deputy prime minister in the government.
“We have a working relationship with the government and would welcome them to the capital”, Sheikh said. The move came as residents reported an upsurge in violence in Mogadishu, with looting, gunfire and checkpoints erected after their former Islamist leaders deserted the city.
IRAK.</B> Car bomb kills 10 near Baghdad stadium. A car bomb exploded at a petrol station near the Shaab stadium in central Baghdad yesterday, killing 10 people and wounding 25, police said. Separately, two roadside bombs in Bab al-Sharji in central Baghdad killed seven people and wounded 35, Interior Ministry and police sources said.
Bomb attacks, mortars and death squad executions are killing an average of more than 100 people a day in Iraq, according to UN figures, as sectarian tensions threaten to pitch the country into full-scale civil war.
Baghdad, where Shi'ites, Sunni Arabs, ethnic Kurds and other groups live, is the epicentre of the violence. Abbas's security forces get weapons in Gaza-report
<B>MIDDLE-EAST. </B>Palestinian President denies report of arm shipment. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denied reports yesterday that his security forces in the Gaza Strip had recently received an arms shipment meant to bolster him against Hamas rivals. Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah denied comments made to Reuters by Israeli security sources, which said the arms shipment had arrived via Egypt. The talk about the president’s security services receiving arms is unfounded and not true at all, he said. The Israeli sources did not say where the arms shipment had come from, but that it included a few thousand assault rifles, ammunition clips and millions of bullets. Israeli newspaper, radio and television reports said the arms arrived this week.
Abbas, a moderate who favours peace talks with Israel, is mired in an increasingly violent power struggle with Hamas, an Islamist group that has governed the Palestinians since March and which rejects Western demands it recognise the Jewish state.
Hamas seized on the report as evidence of foreign intervention on behalf of Abbas's more moderate Fatah faction. “Any support to one party against another is an American and Israeli intervention that must be rejected,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.
Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza, had no immediate comment on the arms. An Israeli cabinet minister stopped short of confirming that a shipment had been made but said he would back arming Palestinian forces loyal to Abbas. “The weapons are supposed to give Abu Mazen (Abbas) the ability to cope with organisations like Hamas, which are trying to destroy everything that is good”, Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Israel’s Army Radio.
VATICAN. </B>Cleric hopes for clemency for Saddam. A senior Catholic cleric has said he hopes former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein will be spared execution, citing the Church's opposition to the death penalty.
Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department, was quoted in Italy’s Repubblica newspaper on Thursday saying there was a chance for last-minute clemency for Saddam after an appeals court upheld his death sentence.
“There’s still a period of 30 days (before the death sentence must be carried out), the president's signature is required, things can happen”, Martino was reported as saying.
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has also condemned the decision to impose the death penalty. Martino criticised the US authorities at the time of Saddam’s capture in December 2003 for releasing TV pictures of soldiers checking his teeth “as if he were a cow”, images that he said needlessly humiliated the man. The former papal envoy to the United Nations said there was “no doubt” that Saddam was responsible for mass murders, but that did not change the Church's opposition to capital punishment. “You can’t think of compensating for one crime with another one”, he said. Saddam was sentenced in November for crimes against humanity and the death penalty was upheld on Tuesday.
Martino said he backed the idea of holding a peace conference aimed at solving all the major conflicts in the Middle East and reiterated the Vatican’s position that invasion of Iraq by US-led coalition was wrong.
ENGLAND.</B>Seventh person feared dead after helicopter crash. Rescue teams searched yesterday for a seventh person feared dead after a helicopter crashed into the sea off northwest England, killing six people. The bodies of six people have been recovered from the sea after the helicopter went down off Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, on Wednesday. The aircraft, with two crew and five passengers, was picking up gas rig workers when it crashed 24 miles from the coast. “In the rescue business you never say never, but you have to temper that with being quite realistic about someone’s chances of survival,” RAF rescue co-ordinator Michael Mulford told BBC radio. “As each hour goes by, clearly the fears grow for the safety of anyone still in the water.”The cause of the crash is unknown. Air accident investigators have begun an inquiry. Utility firm Centrica Plc, which produces gas from the Morecambe Bay gas fields, said its employees were among those killed. The helicopter’s operator, Canadian company CHC Helicopter Corporation, said it was helping with the search. “All of us are deeply, deeply saddened by this tragic accident,” CHC President and Chief Executive Officer Sylvain Allard said in a statement.“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims.” The helicopter, a twin-engine Eurocopter AS365N, had taken off from Blackpool airport to pick up gas rig workers to bring them back to shore.
It had stopped to pick up passengers at two rigs and was about to go to a third platform when it ditched in the sea. Gas was discovered in Morecambe Bay in 1974. The fields can meet up to 8 percent of Britain’s peak gas demand. The bay was the scene of another disaster in 2004 when 21 Chinese cockle pickers drowned there.
<B>INDONESIA. </B>Aid moves to thousands displaced by floods. Government and aid agencies were moving food, water and medical supplies yesterday to hundreds of thousands forced into temporary shelters by floods and landslides on Indonesia's Sumatra island. But in Bukit Rata village in Aceh province's hard-hit Tamiyang regency, where 64 families have pitched tents on the roadside and higher ground, not everyone was satisfied. “We have just complained to the district office about the lack of assistance. We know our hamlet is supposed to receive 25 sacks of rice but only 20 sacks arrived,” said displaced resident Suroso Kasimin. Water has receded but houses were still covered by thick mud. Some residents were trying to cleaning up their homes. The government has been using helicopters to get aid to the most isolated points in Aceh province on the northern tip of Sumatra, while military planes and lorries shuttle relief supplies to other areas.
The confirmed death toll in Aceh and neighbouring North Sumatra province has remained around 100 in recent days, but figures for the displaced have climbed to above 400,000. “Displaced people in Aceh are at 365,335, while in North Sumatra (they are) at 44,189,” said Laksmita Novira, a U.N. aid spokeswoman in Aceh. More than 200 people were missing in Aceh alone, she said.
Medication and doctors had been sent to help the displaced, according to Rustam Pakaya, the health ministry's crisis centre chief. “So far, there is no serious health problem,” he said. Lina Sofiani, a UNICEF officer in Jakarta, told Reuters : “Today, a child protection team from UNICEF’s Banda Aceh base will go to east Aceh. Three diarrhoea cases were reported”. The government was sending additional food to flood-affected areas, and polluted wells were being treated with chlorine and temporary camps fogged with insecticide, the health ministry’s Pakaya told Reuters.
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