The New Nation - Internet Edition

Pro-independence strike cripples life in Indian Kashmir

AFP, Srinagar

A one-day strike called by Muslim separatists against New Delhi's rule brought Indian Kashmir to a standstill on Saturday, the latest protest to hit the region.

The strike, which closed shops, schools, banks and offices in Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, was one of a string of shutdowns and demonstrations called by separatists in the Muslim-majority Himalayan territory.

"The strike is to protest against India's rule in Kashmir," the region's leading moderate separatist politician Mirwaiz Umar Farooq told AFP from his family compound in Srinagar where he was placed under house arrest on Friday.

There were similar shutdowns in other towns of the Kashmir valley, according to police and residents.

Farooq, who is also the region's chief Muslim cleric, was put under house arrest along with two other top separatist leaders, Syed Ali Geelani and Yasin Malik, as security forces struggled to contain anti-India protests.

In the past few months, the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley has witnessed the biggest separatist demonstrations since the revolt against New Delhi's rule erupted in 1989.

The flare-up in unrest prompted by a row about land near a Hindu shrine high in the Himalayas has triggered a heavy crackdown by Indian security forces.

"The strike is also to protest the crackdown on pro-freedom demonstrations," said Farooq.

Last week, authorities lifted a nine-day curfew-the longest to be imposed since the anti-India militancy was at its peak in the early 1990s-to coincide with the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Since June, at least 39 Muslims and three Hindus have died in police shootings in the Kashmir valley and the mainly Hindu area of Jammu, further to the south, as authorities struggled to quell the prote

Another report adds: Thousands of Muslims staged sit-in protests in parts of Kashmir on Friday, resuming demonstrations against New Delhi's rule in the disputed Himalayan region after a three-day break, witnesses said.

Last month at least 35 protesters in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley were killed by government forces in some of the largest pro-independence rallies since a revolt against New Delhi's rule broke out in the region in 1989.

More than 1,000 people have been injured in the protests, which were halted for three days to allow people to stock rations and prepare for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

"We want freedom," the protesters shouted after weekly Friday prayers. Earlier on Friday, police placed separatist leaders under house arrest to stop them from leading fresh protests.

Those under house arrest included Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the chairman of the separatist alliance All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, and hardline leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

Yasin Malik, another popular separatist leader and chief of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, has been under house arrest since Monday.

On Thursday, hundreds of Kashmiri militants rallied on the Pakistani side of the disputed region, vowing a Muslim holy war to free their homeland from Indian rule.

The protests which began last month were sparked by a decision to grant land to build shelters for Hindus making an annual pilgrimage to the Himalayan region.

Muslims were enraged, forcing the government to backtrack. Hindus in turn protested, blocking the highway to the Kashmir Valley. They relented after the state government offered to allow temporary shelters to be built during the annual pilgrimage. Muslim separatists have rejected the deal.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Kashmir in nearly 20 years of violence involving Indian troops and separatist militants.

Tens of thousands still trapped by India floods

AFP, Patna

Rescue workers in flood-hit northern India have brought over 800,000 people to safety, but tens of thousands more are still believed to be trapped, officials said Friday.

Large swathes of the already impoverished state of Bihar were flooded after defences upstream in Nepal broke, shifting the flow of the Kosi river away from its normal course and onto farmland.

Indian armed forces, other official bodies and aid groups have since used boats to hunt for survivors, some of whom have spent up to two weeks trapped on roofs or isolated high ground without food or clean water.

"A major part of evacuation is over with more than 800,000 people evacuated and shifted to safe places. About 280,000 of them are taking shelter at relief camps," Bihar Disaster Management Minister Nitish Mishra told reporters.

"It was an unprecedented operation, not only in India but in the world," Mishra said, but cautioned that some 50,000 to 100,000 people were still believed to be trapped in flooded areas.

Rescue operations were continuing, although there have been reports of many people refusing to leave their villages-even though they are waist- or neck-deep in water.

Around 100 people are confirmed to have died in the floods, but the real number is certain to be far higher as many were simply washed away by the deep water and strong currents that swept through rural areas.

State officials said 1,100 square kilometres (420 square miles) of land had been badly hit and at least 300,000 homes destroyed.

Water levels have receded in recent days, allowing aid workers to access more areas and bring more people out, said R K Singh, principal secretary in Bihar's disaster management department.

12 killed in suicide car blast in Pakistan

AP, Peshawar

Police say at least 12 people are dead after a suicide car bomber struck a security checkpoint in Pakistan's volatile northwest.

Saturday's blast on the outskirts of Peshawar came as Pakistani lawmakers were voting for a new president and underscored the challenges facing the country's leaders.

Top police official Mohammed Sulman confirms the death toll and says other people were trapped in debris when two buildings at a nearby market were damaged. Hospital officials say wounded people were pouring in.

The U.S. has pushed Pakistan to crack down on insurgents in its northwest. The Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for several recent suicide bombings they called revenge for military offensives.

The blast, which occurred on the outskirts of Peshawar, came as Pakistani lawmakers voted for a new president and underscored the challenges facing the country's leaders.

"The checkpoint is completely destroyed," said Habib Khan, a local police official. "The injured are being transported to hospitals in ambulances."

He said a suicide bomber apparently drove the car into the post, but that police were still investigating the circumstances.

A witness, Kamal Khan, said the blast also damaged a nearby market.

Pockets of Pakistan's northwest are considered militant strongholds. In recent weeks, the Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for a string of suicide bombings they have called revenge for military offensives in the region, which borders Afghanistan.

The U.S. has pushed Pakistan to crack down on insurgents.

A recent U.S.-led ground assault on a Pakistani tribal region near the border, however, prompted protests from the government.

Asif Ali Zardari, widower of ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was expected to win the presidency in Saturday's vote. He has vowed to be tough on militancy.

6 killed in Iraq bomb, Chalabi escapes attack

AP, Baghdad

An official in ex-deputy prime minister Ahmad Chalabi's office says six people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack on the former Pentagon favorite's convoy in western Baghdad.

But the official, Ayad Kadhim Sabti, says Chalabi escaped Friday night's attack without injuries. Police had previously said Chalabi was not in the convoy.

Sabti said Saturday that the six people killed were Chalabi's bodyguards. Police say 17 others were injured in the attack in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood.

Chalabi is a secular Shiite who was once viewed by Washington as a possible successor to Saddam Hussein.

Afghan provincial governor dies in car crash

AFP, Kabul

The newly appointed governor of Afghanistan's rugged mountain province of Nuristan was killed when the car he was travelling in plunged into a river en route to Kabul, his deputy said Saturday.

Hazrat Din Noor, 55, was killed Friday along with his driver and a bodyguard in the Sarobi area roughly 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the capital, deputy governor Halim Nuristani told AFP. A former commander in the anti-Soviet resistance, Noor had replaced Tamim Nuristani who was sacked days after speaking out against July 4 US-led air strikes said to have killed 17 civilians.

The reasons for his dismissal were not made clear and it was not certain if it was related to his comments on the casualties.

Nuristan, one of 34 provinces in Afghanistan, is in the Hindu Kush mountains on the border with Pakistan.

Woman locked in cabin for nine years

Reuters, Stockholm

A 58-year-old man suspected of keeping a woman locked up in a tiny cabin in southern Sweden for nine years has been ordered by a court to be held in custody, local media reported.

The man, who denied all charges, was suspected of having kept his common-law wife imprisoned since 1999 in a cabin measuring 15 square meters in a small community near the town of Eksjo.

The woman, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, weighed less than 40 kilos (88 pounds) when she was admitted to hospital earlier this week, Swedish television channel SVT reported on its website.

A prosecutor told news agency TT there was no indication this was due to ill treatment, but rather to her illness.

The woman was reported to be in stable condition and the court remanded her partner in custody on Friday, ordering that he be given a psychiatric examination, TT reported.

In a further twist to the case, authorities have not been able to verify the identity of the 58-year-old. The identity he provided to the police was that of a man who was declared dead eight years ago, according to official records.

The man was brought in for questioning and later arrested on Wednesday after suspicions had been aroused when the woman was brought to hospital a few days earlier.

Nearly 500 dead in flooded Haitian town

Reuters, Port-Au-Prince

Haitian police found 495 corpses when muddy floodwaters began to recede on Friday from the port city of Gonaives following days of heavy rain from Tropical Storm Hanna, the town's police commissioner said on Friday.

"The weather is calm now and we are discovering more bodies. We have found 495 bodies so far and there are 13 people missing," commissioner Ernst Dorfeuille told Reuters.

"The smell of the dead is very unpleasant in Gonaives. The death toll could be even higher."

Meanwhile, Receding waters in the starving Haitian city of Gonaives revealed the bodies of more victims in floods from Tropical Storm Hanna, as U.N. peacekeepers and aid groups struggled to feed thousands of people.

Officials feared fatalities in Haiti from Hanna could rise above the 163 confirmed dead, but said reports of higher death tolls were based on unconfirmed estimates.

Flooded roads, broken piers and mass cell phone outages impeded efforts Friday to get food to about 2,000 hungry people, even as Hurricane Ike threatened to trigger more deadly floods across the water-logged city this weekend.

McCain, Obama battle over character, economy

AFP, Colorado Springs

The US presidential race was shaping up as a battle over whether a strong character trumps solid policies Saturday as John McCain attacked his Democratic rival as too weak and Barack Obama worked to refocus voters on the issues.

McCain set out on the campaign trail with newly crowned running mate Sarah Palin with a vow to bring reform to Washington and a strong focus on their willingness to buck the party line in order to faithfully serve their country.

Obama argued that the presidency was too important to be a "personality contest" and shot back at McCain for failing to focus on the issue which matters most to voters: how they were going to make ends meet in a troubled economy.

"I think I've got a pretty good personality," Obama said Friday after ridiculing McCain's campaign manager for saying the election was about personality not issues.

"But that's not why I'm running for president. I'm running for president to put people back to work, to give them health care, to make them have college that's affordable."

McCain was attempting to co-opt Obama's mantle of change in a year in which polls show Americans overwhelmingly think their country is heading in the wrong direction.

McCain mounted sharp attacks dismissing Obama as nothing but talk before delivering an acceptance speech that was long on personal history and short on policy proposals.

"This is the ticket to shake up Washington because Senator Obama doesn't have the strength to do it," the decorated war hero told an enthusiastic crowd in Sterling Heights, Michigan Friday night before flying to Colorado for a morning rally.

"If you want real change send the ones who have actually done it. Send a team of mavericks who aren't afraid to go to Washington and break some china."

Palin , who was elected governor of Alaska two years ago after fighting corruption in her own party, took the attack further and claimed that Barack Obama would not protect the United States if he were to win the November 4 election.

She attacked Obama's opposition to sending more troops to Iraq last year and praised McCain's willingness to "put his country first" and support the surge at a time when the war was highly unpopular.

Indian military warns PM over poor wages

AFP, New Delhi

The Indian military on Friday took its long-running battle for higher wages to the prime minister, warning poor perks were hurting morale in one of the world's biggest armies. A top commander representing the army, airforce and navy met Manmohan Singh to repeat demands for better pay for India's million-plus military.

The military has stepped up its demands after the government unveiled a hefty wage hike for some five million federal workers last month. Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta, who met with the premier, discussed the "core issue" of low salaries, a defence ministry official told AFP after the meeting. The admiral handed over a memorandum to Singh which called for a review of the relatively modest perks offered to the military on August 14 when civilian government employees were given the 21-percent wage rise.

"The (wage hike) notification has unwillingly upset existing relativities between the defence forces and other central government officers," Mehta said in his appeal.

"This has not only resulted in lowering of their status, especially in the middle ranks, but also has an effect on the organisational structure in various fields where they work together," the admiral warned.

The Indian military, the world's fourth largest, has been campaigning for a 200-percent wage hike for non-ranking personnel.

More than 120 army, navy and air force middle-rung officers have sought early retirement this year, saying they were not being adequately rewarded.

The resignations have come at a bad time for the army, which is already facing a shortage of more than 11,000 officers.