The New Nation - Internet Edition

Bomb kills 20 on bus in central Sri Lanka

AP, Colombo

A bomb tore through a bus packed with civilians in central Sri Lanka Saturday, killing 20 people and wounding 50 others, the military said.

The blast inside the bus occurred at 7 a.m. in Dambulla, a town about 90 miles northeast of the capital, Colombo, said military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara, blaming separatist Tamil Tiger rebels.

The bus traveling to the north-central town of Anuradhapura was stopped in Dambulla when the blast occurred, Nanayakkara said.

Spokesmen for the rebels could not immediately be reached for comment. But the group, listed as a terror organization by the U.S. and European Union, routinely denies responsibility for such attacks.

Violence has intensified on this Indian Ocean island and more than 700 have been killed since the government withdrew from a cease-fire with Tamil rebels last month. The bus attack was outside rebel-held territory in the north where the military is pressing an offensive.

"They (the rebels) are targeting innocent civilians as they are facing defeats in the battle front," said Chandrapala Liyanage, a spokesman for President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The bus attack came a day after government troops attacked rebel bunkers along the front lines in the island nation's embattled north, triggering a battle that killed 10 guerrillas and two soldiers, the military said.

Army troops, backed by artillery and mortars, launched a pre-dawn attack on rebels guarding the front lines in the northern Jaffna peninsula and destroyed 10 rebel bunkers, said Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara, the military spokesman.

The battle killed 10 rebels and two soldiers, he said. Another six soldiers were wounded.

Civilians have borne the brunt of the violence over the past month with three attacks on passenger buses killing dozens including many school children.

On Jan. 16 a roadside bomb attack by suspected rebels on a bus near the southeastern town of Buttala killed 27 people. Last Tuesday 18 people were killed in a similar bus attack in rebel held north.

Also dozens of other civilians were found hacked and shot to death in the southeast and a mass grave was recovered with 16 bodies killed execution style in a north-central village.

Both the government and the rebels blame each other for the attacks against the civilians.

The Tamil Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for an independent state in the north and east for the country's ethnic Tamil minority after decades of being marginalized by Sinhalese-dominated governments. The fighting has killed more than 70,000 people.

Iraqi PM vows to 'crush terrorists’ as Baghdad bomb blasts death toll rises to 99

Reuters, Baghdad

Iraq's prime minister vowed on Saturday to ensure improved security is not derailed after two female bombers killed 99 people in the deadliest attacks in Baghdad since last April.

Nuri al-Maliki said Friday's bombings at popular pet markets in the capital would not herald a return to the savage violence that took Iraq to the brink of all-out sectarian civil war. The U.S. military blamed al Qaeda for the attacks.

"I swear on the blood (of the victims), we will achieve all our goals in securing a stable Iraq," he said in a statement. "We will continue to t crush the terrorists and target their strongholds."

In the bloodiest attack, police said a female bomber killed 62 and wounded 88 at the Ghazil pet market in central Baghdad, one of the most popular meeting places in the city and a previous target for attacks.

That came just minutes after another blast killed 37 and wounded 57 at a bird market in southern Baghdad, police said.

Rebels battle inside Chad's capital

Reuters, N'Djamena

Chadian rebels fighting to overthrow President Idriss Deby battled their way into the capital N'Djamena on Saturday and were heading for the presidential palace, a foreign resident in the city said.

Rebel units from a column of 300 vehicles have closed in on the capital in their most determined offensive in two years. They fought with government troops on Friday in confused battles dozens of kilometers (miles) to the northeast of the city. "Rebels are headed for the palace and are about two blocks from here. The rebels are winning," the resident said in an email sent from the compound of a western embassy in N'Djamena, adding she could hear heavy weapons fire.

The French and U.S. embassies in the central African oil producing country were preparing their nationals there for evacuation.

France's diplomatic mission instructed its citizens to assemble at three designated sites in the capital. France on Friday reinforced its military contingent stationed in Chad. The U.S. embassy asked those American nationals who wanted to be evacuated to come to the embassy immediately.

Chad says the rebels, who advanced rapidly this week across the country from the eastern border with Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, are armed and backed by the Sudanese government. Khartoum routinely denies such accusations.

China's wild winter weather could last another week

Reuters, Shaoguan

Emergency crews struggled on Saturday to restore power to parts of southern China blacked out for a week by heavy snow as forecasters warned of no quick end to the worst winter weather in 50 years.

Mobilizing the might of the state, China has deployed more than 300,000 troops and nearly 1.1 million militia and army reservists to get traffic moving and ensure power supplies, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The freak weather, which has killed at least 60 people and doomed millions to a cold, dark Lunar New Year holiday, could last another week, the Central Meteorological Station said on Saturday.

Repair teams were racing to bring power to Chenzhou, a city of 4 million in the southern province of Hunan, which has been without electricity for eight days. The town's stocks of food and petrol are running low.

"We will strive to partially restore electricity supply in Chenzhou on Saturday," Xinhua quoted Yin Jijun, an official with China's national grid, as saying.

About 5,000 workers have been mending frozen power lines leading to Chenzhou, with some soldiers firing submachine guns to shatter ice cloaking the cables, according to Xinhua. It said two repair workers had been killed.

Fight looms over global AIDS programme

AP, Washington

A five-year, $15 billion effort to combat AIDS in Africa and other areas - arguably the most important and popular international program of the Bush presidency - may become a political battleground as it comes up for renewal.

President Bush wants to double and House Democrats want to triple spending on a program that is now treating 1.4 million people, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, where he will visit in two weeks.

Democrats also want to slash spending on a multimillion-dollar component that emphasizes sexual abstinence. And that has conservative groups furious.

The president used his State of the Union address this week to repeat a request he first made last May that Congress double global AIDS money to $30 billion over the next five years.

"We can bring healing and hope to many more," he said.

Bush, who will visit Africa in mid-February, gets no argument on that point from advocacy groups or lawmakers in both parties. They've been hailing the program since he first promoted it and Congress passed it in 2003.

Kenyan rivals strike deal to try and stop violence

Reuters, Nairobi

Kenya's government and opposition struck an agreement on Friday to take immediate steps to try and end tribal bloodshed in a five-week-old political standoff in which about 850 people have been killed. The agreement was brokered by former U.N. head Kofi Annan, leading an African mediation mission to resolve the standoff that began when a December 27 poll returned President Mwai Kibaki to power. Opposition leader Raila Odinga says the vote was rigged.

Annan said the two sides would discuss how to stop the violence, delivery of humanitarian aid and how to end the political impasse before tackling a longer term solution in Kenya, East Africa's biggest economy and a popular tourist spot. "The first (agenda item) is to take immediate action to stop the violence," Annan told a news conference, adding that both sides would get round the negotiating table from Monday. "But more importantly, the parties agreed that the first three items (on the agenda) could be handled and resolved within 7 to 15 days," said Annan.

Gaza-Egypt border stays open as Cairo talks end

AFP, Rafah

Thousands of Gazans poured over the breached border with Egypt for a 10th straight day on Friday as officials in Cairo held fresh talks with the Islamist Hamas movement on restoring order. For a second day, Egyptian security forces attempted to block vehicles passing through the two makeshift crossing points in the divided border town of Rafah. But the action drew an angry response from Hamas militants who tore down the heavy metal roadblocks erected by police prompting the Egyptian authorities to allow cars through in the afternoon. Motorists were unable to drive too far into the Egyptian part of Rafah, however, as police set up roadblocks causing immense traffic jams. The leading Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram had announced in its Friday edition that the authorities would close one of the two crossings blown open in the border wall within hours in readiness for the complete resealing of the frontier.

Dubai ruler names son as crown prince

AFP, Dubai

Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashed al-Maktoum has appointed his son Sheikh Hamdan as crown prince of the booming Gulf city state, the official WAM news agency reported on Friday. Sheikh Mohammad, who is also the vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, issued a decree appointing Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammad, 26, as crown prince from February 1. Sheikh Hamdan, a graduate of Britain's Sandhurst military academy, heads Dubai's executive council which supervises public sector and development strategies, it said. The post of Dubai's crown prince had been left vacant since Sheikh Mohammad, who was himself crown prince, succeeded his late brother Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashed as ruler in January 2006.

Iran gained from US invasions: US envoy

AP, New York

Iran is stronger today because of the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the American ambassador to the United Nations said Friday. The 2003 invasion of Iraq removed a key rival of Shiite Iran with the ouster of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government. Iran has friendly ties with the Shiites now in power in Iraq. "It's helped Iran's relative position in the region, because Iraq was a rival of Iran t and the balance there has disintegrated or weakened," Zalmay Khalilzad said while answering questions from students at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. "And so one of the objectives of Iran, in my view, is to discourage a reemergence of Iraq as a balancer. And Afghanistan, too, the change was helpful to Iran."

Bolivian plane crash-lands, all survive

AP, La Paz

A plane carrying more than 150 people crash-landed in a bog in eastern Bolivia on Friday after fierce storms turned it away from its destination and it tried to reach another airport hundreds of miles away, according to officials and news reports. All on board survived. Photographs by local media showed the charter Boeing 727, flown by a local airline, in a flooded forest clearing, stripped of at least one wing. A set of landing gear was in the water nearby. "We noticed the engines went out, and there was this calm," Paolo Bravo, a Bolivian senator who was on board, told the radio network Erbol. "Then they told us, 'Crash positions! Crash positions!' and it was just another two or three seconds before we hit," he said. "I think you could call it a belly flop," Bravo added. "The plane fell, the wings broke off, but the fuselage was OK." The plane took off from the Bolivian capital, La Paz, but severe storms forced it to turn away from its destination in the northern city of Cobija.