The New Nation - Internet Edition

Obama toughens Iran stance, backs Israel on Jerusalem

Reuters, Washington

Barack Obama toughened his terms for diplomacy with Iran and backed Israel's stance on Jerusalem on Wednesday in his first foreign policy speech since capturing the Democratic nomination for U.S. president.

The Illinois senator vowed to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and insisted Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of the Jewish state in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobby group.

Obama, who clinched the nomination on Tuesday, has faced wariness among Jewish voters over his commitment to Israel, buoyed partly by a rumor campaign suggesting he is a Muslim and that his advisers have a pro-Arab bent.

Obama, a Christian, vowed in his speech to work for peace with a Palestinian state alongside Israel. His campaign has tried to dispel suggestions he might pressure Israel in negotiations more than his rival, Republican Sen. John McCain.

"Let me be clear. Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is nonnegotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper," Obama said.

"But any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," he said.

Israel calls the city its undivided and eternal capital, but this status has never been recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, for a future capital.

The issue is central to peace negotiations President George W. Bush hopes to conclude before he steps down in January. Americans elect his successor on November 4.

Obama alluded to the rumor campaign in his speech.

"All I want to say is-let me know if you see this guy named Barack Obama, because he sounds pretty scary," joked Obama, appearing upbeat after winning the nomination battle against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Obama supported Israel's efforts to renew talks with Syria over the Golan Heights and backed its September airstrike on a site in Syria that Israel claims was aimed at pursuing nuclear weapon, which Syria denies.

"Syria has taken dangerous steps in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction," Obama said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, on a three-day visit to Washington, welcomed Obama's comments.

"Barack Obama's appearance was very impressive and his remarks on Jerusalem were very touching," Olmert said. "If he is elected president, we will discuss with him all the issues on the agenda."

McCain has been assailing Obama over statements suggesting willingness to talk directly to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel's elimination.

Obama has since said he would not guarantee a meeting with the Iranian president. He went further to AIPAC.

"We will open up lines of communication, build an agenda, coordinate closely with our allies, and evaluate the potential for progress," Obama said of potential talks with Tehran.

"I have no interest in sitting down with our adversaries just for the sake of talking," he said.

"But as president of the United States, I would be willing to lead tough and principled diplomacy with the appropriate Iranian leader at a time and place of my choosing if and only if it can advance the interests of the United States."

Obama termed danger from Iran in the Middle East "grave."

"I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon-everything," he said to a standing ovation.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent and supporter of McCain, told reporters there was a "disconnect" between Obama's discussion on Wednesday of the seriousness of the threat from Iran and some of his earlier statements.

McCain promised at AIPAC on Monday to pursue tougher financial sanctions on Iran if he became president. He called for a worldwide divestment campaign aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Clinton, who has not yet conceded, also spoke at the conference and voiced strong support for Israel.

As China’s quake lake rises, govt warns to prepare for the worst

AFP, Qinglian

Over a million people living below China's dangerous "quake lake" were warned to prepare for the worst as the enormous body of water kept rising on Thursday to near bursting levels. "We must prepare for dealing with the worst-case scenario but strive for the best results," said Water Resources Minister Chen Lei, as two weeks of preparations were about to be put to the test.

The lake was created in the May 12 earthquake when a landslide blocked the Jianjiang river, and the water masses have been building up steadily since then.

The lake has become one of the most pressing issues in the aftermath of the disaster in southwest China's mountainous Sichuan province, which killed more than 69,000 people and left millions of others homeless.

The mud and rock dam was in danger of collapsing under the pressure of the mounting body of water, and seepage was already occurring, the official Xinhua news agency said, quoting a spokesman for the "lake control headquarters".

Now officials were pinning their hopes on a channel dug by soldiers last week and designed to drain at least enough water to contain the lake.

An estimated 1.3 million people live in areas that could be inundated if the plan does not work, and many were preparing mentally for having to leave.

"If it's not one thing it's the other. If it's not the earthquake, it's the flood. But if they order us to go, we'll go," said Liao Guangmei, a 60-year-old woman in Mianyang, a city threatened by the lake.

Around Mianyang, storefronts had been sealed and protected with sandbags as stripes of red paint sprayed on trees at a height of about one metre (three feet) indicated where the water would reach if the lake were to burst.

On a road leading to the town of Qinglian, near the lake, a kilometre-long (0.6-mile-long) line of army trucks was parked, many of them loaded with olive green fibreglass boats, others with portable bridges.

Inside Qinglian, row after row of three- to four-storey apartment buildings were abandoned, while the entrances to the communities had been sealed off with police tape. Amid the ongoing woes, the president of the International Red Cross said China would need up to 10 years to fully overcome the disaster.

"Of course, the challenges are very enormous and dealing with them will be a heavy task for many years," said Juan Manuel Suarez del Toro Rivero, who is touring the quake zone.

"In our experience after an earthquake you need another five to 10 years of work," he told AFP.

The death toll from China's 8.0-magnitude earthquake rose to 69,127 on Thursday, with another 17,918 missing, the government said on Thursday.

In Hanwang town, also in the quake zone, more than 14,000 people were to be evacuated, as they were exposed to landslides and mudflows, according to Xinhua.

Following the announcement, people who had been living in tent camps since they lost their homes in the earthquake were preparing to relocate once again.

"The government says we have to move, because there could be landslides from aftershocks and heavy rain, so it is not safe to stay here anymore," Xu Shifeng told AFP on Thursday as she was taking down her government-issued tent.

But another woman from the Hanwang tent camps, who gave her surname as Li, said she was not going anywhere.

"We already had enough trouble, and I think we are too far away from the mountain," she said, gesturing towards a mountainside behind the city scarred by recent landslides.

An aftershock with a magnitude of 5.3 on Thursday jolted Sichuan's Qingchuan county, the US Geological Survey said. The China Earthquake Administration said the aftershock measured 5.0 on the Richter scale.

Two other aftershocks measuring 4.2 and 4.0 on the Richter scale also rocked Qingchuan in the early hours of Thursday, the China Earthquake Administration said.

Al-Qaida's No. 2 urges holy war over Gaza Strip

AFP, Cairo

Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader called on Muslims to launch a holy war to break Israel's economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, in an audio recording posted Wednesday on an Islamic militant Internet site.

In the 11-minute tape, a voice purportedly belonging to Ayman al-Zawahri says in Arabic that the "salvation of the Muslim nation is through the march of its sons on the path of jihad."

An accompanying banner says the message was issued to mark the 41st anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, during which Egypt lost the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Syria lost the Golan Heights and Jordan lost the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Trying to minimize the shock of the defeat, Arabs have long called the war the "naksa" - "setback" in Arabic - but it remains a deep wound.

In al-Zawahri's recording, titled "In Memory of the Naksa t Break the Siege of Gaza," Osama bin Laden's deputy blames Arab regimes for the 1967 defeat. He says Arab governments were "impotent and unable to protect the Muslim nation, its sanctuaries and its wealth."

"The sons of the nation should break the shackles of the treacherous regimes and move to wage jihad, which has become a duty," al-Zawahri says. The tape follows a audio message from Bin Laden on May 18 in which he criticized Arab states for not waging war against Israel.

Al-Zawahri's message seemed especially directed at Hamas, the Islamic militant group that seized control of the Gaza Strip last June in fighting with supporters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas' government is now based in the West Bank, leaving the Palestinian territories split.

Hamas' seizure of Gaza and its near daily firing of rockets at towns in southern Israel has prompted Israel to impose a blockade on the strip and mount airstrikes and occasional ground operations in Gaza.

Al-Zawahri lashes out at Egyptian authorities in his new message, declaring Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his troops "criminal traitors" for perpetuating Israel's blockade by sealing its own boundary with Gaza.

"You have the right to enter Egypt whenever you like and destroy the treacherous siege," al-Zawahri tells Gazans. "Those who confront you should not blame anyone but themselves."

Lawmakers want US forces to leave Iraq Truck explosion kills 18, wounds 75

Reuters, Washington

A majority of the Iraqi parliament has written to Congress rejecting a long-term security deal with Washington if it is not linked to a requirement that U.S. forces leave, a U.S. lawmaker said on Wednesday.

Rep. William Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat and Iraq war opponent, released excerpts from a letter he was handed by Iraqi parliamentarians laying down conditions for the security pact that the Bush administration seeks with Iraq.

The proposed pact has become increasingly controversial in Iraq, where there have been protests against it. It has also drawn criticism from Democrats on the presidential election campaign trail in the United States, who say President George W. Bush is trying to dictate war policy after he leaves office.

"The majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject any military-security, economic, commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the United States that is not linked to clear mechanisms that obligate the occupying American military forces to fully withdraw from Iraq," the letter to the leaders of Congress said.

The signatures represented just over half the membership of Iraq's parliament, said Delahunt, a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee chairman.

AP report from Baghdad: A truck packed with rockets blew up Wednesday in a Shiite area of Baghdad, killing 18 people in the deadliest single blast in the city in more than three months. Three U.S. soldiers were killed by gunfire north of the capital.

A U.S. military spokesman said the blast appeared to have been an accident that occurred as Shiite militiamen were transporting the weapons through a densely populated neighborhood of northern Baghdad - possibly to fire at a nearby American base.

Iraqi police said a suicide truck bomber had targeted the house of an Iraqi police general, who was not at home but whose nephew was among those killed. U.S. officials said 75 people were wounded, and police said they included the general's elderly parents.

But the U.S. military disputed the police account, saying Shiite extremists were transporting rockets and mortars on a tractor-trailer when the weapons mistakenly exploded. Witnesses also confirmed the vehicle was carrying weapons.

"They were trying to attack us t and it went off (accidentally)" said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Stover, who provided the death toll. "They wouldn't waste rockets like that" on a suicide attack.

The force of the blast crumbled several two-story buildings, buried cars under rubble, sheared off a corrugated steel roof and left a large crater on the residential street.

It was the deadliest single explosion in Baghdad since March 3, when a suicide car bomber killed 22 people in eastern Baghdad. Sixteen people died in a mortar attack in the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City on April 9.

36 killed in fresh Sri Lankan fighting

AFP, Colombo

A wave of new fighting between government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels across Sri Lanka's northern region killed 35 guerrillas and one soldier, the military said Thursday.

Military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said the clashes took place Wednesday in the Vavuniya, Mannar, Welioya and Jaffna areas bordering the rebels' de facto state in the north.

In the worst battle, soldiers killed 20 insurgents in Vavuniya and five soldiers were wounded, he said. Clashes in the nearby Mannar district killed 11 rebels and wounded one soldier, while other battles in Jaffna and Welioya killed four rebels and one soldier, he said.

Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan was not immediately available for comment.

It was not possible to independently verify the military's claims because journalists are banned from the northern jungles where much of the fighting takes place. Each side commonly exaggerates its enemy's casualties and plays down its own.

The government has pledged to capture rebel-held territory and to crush the insurgents by the end of the year.

The Tamil Tiger rebels have fought since 1983 to create an independent state for minority ethnic Tamils, who have been marginalized by successive governments controlled by majority Sinhalese. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers said Thursday they killed 10 government soldiers and wounded 18 others in the latest heavy fighting in the north of the island.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said their fighters beat back an army attempt to break their forward defence lines near Vavuniya during a six-hour battle on Wednesday.

"The Sri Lanka army had suffered casualties, at least 10 killed and more than 18 wounded," the LTTE was quoted saying by the pro-rebel Tamilnet.com website.

The rebels did not disclose their own casualty details, and no independent confirmation of the claim was available.

Al-Qaida claims responsibility for embassy attack

AFP, Cairo

A Web posting purportedly by al-Qaida Thursday claimed responsibility for a suicide attack near Denmark's embassy in Pakistan that left six people dead.

The statement said Monday's bombing fulfilled the promise of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden to exact revenge for Danish papers reprinting a cartoon of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

The attack in Islamabad was a "warning to this infidel nation and whoever follows its example," said the message carried on a Web site frequently used by the Islamic militants.

Denmark "published the insulting drawings," it said, adding that the European country later "refused to apologize for publishing them.

Instead they repeated their act."

Though officials investigating Monday's attack, have not confirmed the terror group's role, Danish authorities have said al-Qaida or one of its affiliates was likely behind it. There have been no arrests.

The bomb detonated outside the embassy and also wounded at least 35 people. It damaged the embassy building as well as nearby offices and cars.

The statement was signed by an al-Qaida commander in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed and dated Tuesday, but its authenticity couldn't immediately be verified.

Many suicide bombings in Pakistan are believed to have been planned in its semiautonomous tribal regions along the Afghan border, where al-Qaida and Taliban militants have found sanctuary and which are the focus of peace efforts.

The statement said the attack was carried out by an al-Qaida martyr and thanked Pakistani jihadists who helped prepare and execute the plot.

The attack boosted concerns that Pakistan's efforts to strike peace deals with militants along the Afghan border are failing to curb Islamic extremist violence. Washington has also expressed concerns that the two-month-old Pakistani government's efforts to negotiate with some armed groups in the northwest could give al-Qaida and Taliban hard-liners time to regroup and intensify attacks in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The bombing was the worst anti-Danish attack since the Muhammad cartoons first appeared.

World Environment Day calls for end to CO2 addiction

Reuters, Wellington

The United Nations urged the world on Thursday to kick an all-consuming addiction to carbon dioxide and said everyone must take steps to fight climate change. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said global warming was becoming the defining issue of the era and will hurt rich and poor alike.

"Our world is in the grip of a dangerous carbon habit," Ban said in a statement to mark World Environment Day, which is being marked by events around the globe and hosted by the New Zealand city of Wellington. "Addiction is a terrible thing. It consumes and controls us, makes us deny important truths and blinds us to the consequences of our actions," he said in the speech to reinforce this year's World Environment Day theme of "CO2 Kick the Habit." "Whether you are an individual, an organization, a business or a government, there are many steps you can take to reduce your carbon footprint. It is a message we all must take to heart," he said.

World Environment Day, conceived in 1972, is the United Nations' principal day to mark global green issues and aims to give a human face to environmental problems and solutions.

New Zealand, which boasts snow-capped mountains, pristine fjords and isolated beaches used as the backdrop for the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy, has pledged to become carbon-neutral.

"We take pride in our clean, green identity as a nation and we are determined to take action to protect it. We appreciate that protecting the climate means behavior change by each and every one of us," said New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark. New Zealand, like many countries, staged art and street festivals to spread the message on how people can reduce carbon usage.

In Australia, Adelaide Zoo staged a wild breakfast for corporate leaders to focus on how carbon emissions threaten animal habitats. In Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, people plan to clean up Gulshan Baridhara Lake that has become badly polluted, and in Kathmandu the Bagmati River Festival will focus on cleaning up the river there.

Many Asian cities, such as Bangalore and Mumbai, plan tree-planting campaigns, while the Indian town of Pune will open a "Temple of Environment" to help spread green awareness.

Global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels are rising quickly and scientists say the world faces rising seas, melting glaciers and more intense storms, droughts and floods as the planet warms.

A summit of G8 nations in Hokkaido, Japan, next month, is due to formalize a goal agreed a year ago that global carbon emissions should be reduced by 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

But some nations think the cuts should be deeper, leading to a reduction of 80 percent of carbon emissions by 2050 to try to stabilize CO2 concentrations in the air to limit global warming.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said climate change was already a reality.

"We have been experiencing the worst drought in living memory and our inland rivers are running dry," he said in a statement.

"We are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent on 2000 levels by 2050. We will implement emissions trading as the primary mechanism for achieving this target," he said.

North Korean state media said the government was doing its bit for the environment, including updating existing thermal power plants, increasing hydro-power generating capacity, creating more forests and using more organic fertilizers.

The country's carbon output is already fairly small because it cannot afford large quantities of oil and relies heavily on hydro plants for power.

The U.N. Environment Program said the cost of greening of the world's economy would cost as little as a few tenths of global GDP annually over 30 years and would be a driving force for innovation, new businesses and employment.

Abbas calls for dialogue with Hamas

AFP, Ramallah

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas called on Wednesday for reconciliation talks between his Fatah party and Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to him last June.

"I call for a comprehensive national dialogue based on the Yemeni initiative," Abbas said. He pledged to seek Arab and international support for his initiative, which he said was aimed at "re-establishing the unity of our people."

In March, Hamas and Fatah reached a Yemeni-brokered deal to open their first direct talks since the Islamists' bloody seizure of the Gaza Strip. Hamas's first reaction to the Abbas initiative was favourable.

The group's supremo in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, "receives favourably this very positive call for a national dialogue in line with the Yemeni initiative," spokesman Taher Nunu said.

Haniya "will deliver his official response tomorrow (Thursday) either during a speech or a news conference."

Since Hamas's June takeover, the two factions have had no direct contacts, with Abbas having repeatedly said he will not negotiate with Hamas unless it first returns Gaza to his control, a precondition Hamas has always rejected. The so-called Sanaa Declaration was signed by Fatah parliamentary leader Azzam al-Ahmed and Hamas number two Mussa Abu Marzuk.

It aimed to end the bitter stand-off between the longtime rivals since Hamas drove forces loyal to the Fatah party of Abbas out of Gaza in a week of deadly street battles.

As well as the restoration of the national unity government in power before the Hamas takeover and the re-establishment of the Palestinian leadership's authority over Gaza, the Yemeni initiative also provides for early elections.

Hamas's action-denounced as a coup by Abbas-effectively split the Palestinian territories into two separately ruled entities, and the Palestinian president had refused any talks until the Islamists relinquished the territory.

Astronauts open space station’s 'beautiful’ Japanese lab

AFP, Washington

Astronauts on Wednesday opened the International Space Station's newest and biggest room, a bus-sized Japanese laboratory providing the Asian power its first manned space facility.

Capping a busy day in space that included repairs of a faulty station toilet and long preparations for the lab's inauguration, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide smiled as he inaugurated his country's Kibo facility.

"This is a great moment for the Japanese folks," Hoshide said before floating into the lab, whose name Kibo means "hope" in Japanese. "It's a beautiful module and we have a new hope on the space station."

Hoshide and American colleague Karen Nyberg entered first, wearing protective goggles and masks to check the air quality.

Hoshide waved a "welcome" at a camera before the station's eight other occupants floated in.

Showing off the 15-tonne lab's roomy interior, the eight astronauts and two Russian cosmonauts performed backflips and twirled as they floated around Kibo.

Hoshide, Nyberg and five other Americans arrived at the station aboard the US space shuttle Discovery on Monday, carrying Kibo in its payload bay. The lab was attached to the station on Tuesday with a robotic arm.

At 11.2 meters (36.7 feet) long, the facility is bigger than its American and European counterparts. NASA's Destiny module is 8.5 meters long while Europe's Columbus facility, which was installed in February, measures 6.8 meters.

Kibo's 10-meter (33-foot) robotic arm, which will manipulate materials and equipment for science experiments, will also be installed during the Discovery mission.

Shuttle Endeavour already brought one piece of the laboratory in March-a logistics module that will be used for storage.

The third and final part of the lab-an outdoor facility that will allow experiments to be exposed to the effects of space-will be delivered next year.

When completed, Kibo will allow astronauts to carry out experiments in medicine, biology and biotechnology, material production and communications, both in a pressurized environment and completely exposed to space.

Japan PM faces likely censure but seen keeping job

Reuters, Tokyo

Unpopular Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda could well suffer an embarrassing if non-binding censure in parliament's upper house next week, but for now the betting is he can keep his job at least for the rest of the year. Japan's main opposition Democratic Party is likely to submit the rare censure motion against Fukuda in the opposition-controlled upper house, where it would almost certainly pass, party sources said on Thursday. "At least in the view of party executives, this is definite," Kyodo news agency quoted a top party official as saying. "After that, it's a question of timing." Fukuda's ratings have slipped below 20 percent in some polls as he has struggled to cope with a divided parliament, where the opposition has taken every opportunity to delay key legislation. That has prompted talk that the ruling party may replace its leader after he hosts a Group of Eight summit in July. But Fukuda has brushed off talk of a censure motion, telling reporters on Wednesday in Rome, where he attended a world food summit, that it might be a frivolous step by the opposition. Democratic Party leader Ichiro Ozawa has made clear he wants to force Fukuda to step down or call a snap lower house poll by fanning public dissatisfaction with the leader and frustration over the political stalemate that is stymieing government policy.

Democratic Party officials said a censure motion would take aim at Fukuda's introduction of a confusing national health insurance scheme that has outraged many elderly-long supporters of the ruling party-by forcing some aged 75 and over to pay more. The Democrats want to abolish the new system.

"Once this system took effect in April, the overwhelming view of the people has been that it is just too cruel," Democratic Party executive Naoto Kan told a news conference.

The insurance row came close on the heels of the ruling bloc's revival of a hefty and unpopular petrol tax used to fund roading projects that critics decried as wasteful.

Lenin should be moved from Red Square: Gorbachev

Reuters , Moscow

The embalmed body of revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin should be moved from Red Square and buried as his family had wished, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev said on Wednesday.

Lenin led the 1917 Bolshevik revolution to found the first Communist state, which lasted 74 years until Gorbachev presided over the break-up of the Soviet Union.

He died on January 21, 1924 and despite the pleas of relatives, his body was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum on Red Square in the shadow of the Kremlin walls. Lenin's body is still on public display.

Opponents say the ghosts of the Soviet Union should be put to rest and that Lenin, an atheist known by his patronymic, Ilych, be given a proper burial.

"My view is as follows-we should not be occupied right now with grave digging. But we will necessarily come to a time when the mausoleum will have lost its meaning and we will bury Ilych, give him up to the earth as his family had wanted," Gorbachev told reporters. "I think the time will come t it will happen."

The fate of Lenin is an emotional question in modern Russia, where the Communists are the second biggest political party.

The Russian Orthodox Church has called for Lenin to be buried, but the Communist Party says the father of the Soviet Union should stay put.

Russia's first post-Soviet leader Boris Yeltsin more than once spoke in favor of removing the mausoleum from Red square. But strong pro-Communist sentiment in the country prevented him from doing so. In the end, Yeltsin avoided taking a decision.

Vladimir Putin also fudged the issue, saying the question was emotive and hard to tackle, and his successor, President Dmitry Medvedev, has not yet made his position clear.

In Soviet times, revering the memory of Lenin was a Communist obligation. Communists still mark his April birthday.

After his death, Lenin's brain was removed and studied by Soviet scientists, who tried to prove his revolutionary genius under a microscope.

Magnitude 5.3 aftershock hits quake-battered

China

AFP, Mianyang

A strong aftershock struck China's quake-battered Sichuan province Thursday, as rising water levels in a lake caused by landslides in the massive May 12 temblor forced evacuations from downstream areas.

There were no immediate reports of new damage or injuries caused by the 5.3 magnitude aftershock. The U.S. Geological Survey reported that it struck at 12:41 p.m. (12:41 a.m. EDT) just south of the town of Qingchuan at the relatively shallow depth of 6 miles.

Authorities had earlier begun evacuating people downstream from Tangjiashan lake, formed above the devastated town of Beichuan, after water rose to within 6 feet of flooding its bank. Authorities plan to drain lake water through a diversion channel as early as Thursday.