The New Nation - Internet Edition

3 women among 32 killed in Pakistan clashes: US choppers turned back by firing

AP, Islamabad

Security forces backed by helicopter gunships and heavy artillery struck suspected militant hide-outs in northwest Pakistan, killing 32 people, including three women, an official said Monday.

The attack Sunday came in the latest round of a bloody military offensive that has reportedly killed hundreds of people in recent weeks in the Bajur tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Bajur is a suspected hide-out of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and one of the regions the U.S. fears is a safe haven for al-Qaida and Taliban fighters involved in attacks in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani military operation in Bajur comes amid tension with the U.S. over whether the Muslim nation is doing enough to root out insurgents from its territory and whether the U.S. should pursue its own unilateral strikes there.

Senior government official Iqbal Khattak said most of the dead Sunday were alleged militants but at least three were women. The information is difficult to confirm independently because of the region's remote and dangerous nature.

Security forces have used helicopter gunships, fighter jets and heavy artillery to attack suspected militant positions in various areas in Bajur, Khattak said.

In a statement late Sunday the military said ground forces had secured "areas up to Khazana and Nasirabad" and were advancing toward Loi Sam, a key focus of the operation.

The government said late last month that it would cease military operations in Bajur for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, but reserved the right to retaliate against insurgent activities. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said factors including persistent militant mortar attacks and threats to pro-government tribes prompted the military to restart its operation.

"It may take long, but this issue has to be resolved once and for all," Abbas said. "It may take a long time. We cannot just hand over this area to the Taliban." A series of suspected U.S. missile strikes and an American-led ground assault in Pakistani territory in the northwest in recent days have prompted official protests from Pakistan's military and government.

Although Pakistan has vowed to defend its territorial integrity and publicly denounced U.S. incursions, top officials have indicated they would prefer to resolve the conflict through diplomatic means.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is expected to discuss the incursions with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown this week.

Meanwhile, Firing by Pakistani troops forced U.S. military helicopters to turn back to Afghanistan after they crossed into Pakistani territory in the early hours of Monday, Pakistani security officials said.

The incident took place near Angor Adda, a village in the tribal region of South Waziristan where U.S. commandos had carried out a heli-borne raid earlier this month. At least 20 people, including women and children, were killed, sparking outrage in Pakistan, and prompting a diplomatic protest.

Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani said in a strongly worded statement last week that Pakistan would not allow foreign troops onto its soil and Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity would be defended at all cost.

28 dead, thousands powerless in Ike-hit Texas

AP, Galveston

As teams continued the biggest search and rescue operation in Texas history, a new phase of the disaster wrought by Hurricane Ike was only beginning as thousands of people faced long stays in crowded shelters because their homes were damaged or destroyed.

The death toll from Ike rose to 28, but many of those were far to the north of the Gulf Coast as the storm slogged across the nation's midsection, leaving a trail of flooding and destruction. Glass-strewn Houston was placed under a weeklong curfew, and millions of people in the storm's path remained in the dark.

Rescuers said they had saved nearly 2,000 people from waterlogged streets and splintered houses by Sunday afternoon. Many had ignored evacuation orders and tried to ride out the storm. Now they were boarding buses for indefinite stays at shelters in San Antonio and Austin.

"I have nowhere to go," said Ldyyan Jonjocque, 61, waiting for a bus while holding the leashes of her four Australian shepherd dogs. She said she had to leave two dogs behind in her home. She wept as she told of officers rescuing her in a dump truck. In hard-hit towns like Orange, Bridge City and Galveston, authorities continued their door-to-door search well into the night, hoping to reach an untold number of people still in their homes, many without power or supplies.

Many of those who did make it to safety boarded buses without knowing where they were going or when they could return to what might remain of their homes.

Shelters across Texas scurried to find enough cots, and some evacuees arrived with little cash and no idea of what the coming days held.

Even for those who still have a home to go to, Ike's 110 mph winds and battering waves left thousands in coastal areas without electricity, gas and basic communications - and officials estimated it may not be restored for a month.

"We want our citizens to stay where they are," said a weary Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas. "Do not come back to Galveston. You cannot live here at this time."

Michael Geml has braved other storms in his bayfront neighborhood in Galveston, where he's lived for 25 years, though none quite like Ike. The 51-year-old stayed in the third-story Jacuzzi of a neighbor's house, directly on the bay, with family pets as waves crashed across the landscape. But amid the havoc, Geml asked anyone who would listen - even his rescuers - for an odd commodity: cat litter for his spooked feline.

"I'll never stay again," Geml said. "I don't care what the weatherman says - a Category 1, a Category 2. I thought I was going to die."

Kathi and Paul Norton huddled inside their house in Crystal Beach until it collapsed and was swept away. Their flag pole kept the house from collapsing on top of them, buying them a few seconds to escape, holding onto the staircase.

"You never know what a hurricane is like until you ride it on a staircase," said Kathi Norton, 47. As she spoke outside the giant, warehouse-like shelter on a former Air Force base in San Antonio, busloads of new evacuees were arriving, bumper to bumper.

The hurricane also battered the heart of the U.S. oil industry as Ike destroyed at least 10 production platforms, officials said. Details about the size and production capacity of the destroyed platforms were not immediately available, but the damage was to only a fraction of the 3,800 platforms in the Gulf.

It was too soon to know how seriously it would affect oil and gas prices.

President Bush made plans to visit the area on Tuesday.

He said getting power restored is an extremely high priority and urged power companies to "please recruit out-of-state people to come and help you do this."

Ike was downgraded to a tropical depression as it moved north. Roads were closed in Kentucky because of high winds. As far north as Chicago, dozens of people in a suburb had to be evacuated by boat. Two million people were without power in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Of the 28 dead, five were in the hard-hit barrier island city of Galveston, including one body found in a vehicle submerged in floodwater at the airport. There were two other deaths in Texas and four in Louisiana, including a 16-year-old boy trapped in rising floodwaters. Several were farther inland.

Two golfers died when a tree fell on them in Tennessee. There were two deaths in Indiana; three died in Missouri. One person died in Arkansas and three in Ohio, including two motorcyclists killed when a tree toppled on them at a state park.

Zimbabwe rivals sign landmark power-sharing deal

Reuters, Harare

Zimbabwe's rival political parties signed a landmark power-sharing deal on Monday which means President Robert Mugabe will cede some of his powers for the first time in nearly three decades of iron rule.

Mugabe, main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara-who heads a breakaway MDC faction-signed the agreement at a hotel in the capital, Harare, after weeks of tense negotiations.

Under the deal, Tsvangirai will become prime minister and chair a council of ministers supervising the cabinet. Zimbabweans hope the agreement will be a first step in helping to rescue the once prosperous nation from economic collapse. Inflation has rocketed to over 11 million percent and millions have fled to neighboring southern African countries.

The audience cheered as the agreement was signed in front of African leaders including Tanzania's Jakaya Kikwete, chairman of the African Union, Swaziland's King Mswati III and South African President Thabo Mbeki, who brokered the deal.

The three smiling Zimbabwean leaders exchanged copies of the agreement and shook hands.

Mugabe and Tsvangirai last week agreed the deal to end a deep political crisis compounded by the veteran leader's disputed and unopposed re-election in June.

The deal is expected to split control of the powerful security forces that have been key backers of Mugabe.

The president, a former guerrilla commander, is likely to retain command of Zimbabwe's strong army, but the MDC wants to run the police force.

Mugabe's ZANU-PF will have 15 cabinet seats, Tsvangirai's MDC 13 and a splinter MDC faction three seats.

Mugabe, 84, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, will remain president and head the cabinet.

6 children, 3 UN staffers die in new Afghan violence

AFP, Kabul

Six children were killed in a bomb explosion in Afghanistan Sunday while a suicide car bomb blew up a marked United Nations vehicle and killed two Afghan doctors and a driver, officials said.

Authorities meanwhile reported that seven policemen were dead after Taliban militants attacked a remote district centre on Saturday, the same day a British soldier was killed in a bomb blast in the troubled south.

The bloodshed comes amid growing concern over deteriorating security, seven years after a US-led invasion ended the Taliban regime, with top-level talks on rising extremist attacks due in London and Washington due in the coming days.

The children were killed when a bomb they were playing with exploded in a village in the central province of Ghazni, Andar district governor Abdul Rahim Daisiwal told AFP. Around a dozen more children were wounded in the blast and some are in a critical condition, he said, adding it appeared the bomb had been planted and was not one left over from countries decades of war.

Some of the wounded children had been transferred to an international military base for treatment, the NATO-led force headquarters in Kabul said. The Taliban, behind a wave of unrest, denied involvement in the bomb blast.

But the insurgents did claim responsibility for a suicide car bombing that ripped through the southeastern town of Spin Boldak, hitting a vehicle of UN staff on a mission to monitor efforts to vaccinate children against polio.

Afghan doctors Mamoon Tahiri and Shamsulhaque Kakar were killed outright in the explosion, the Afghan health ministry said in a statement. A driver died in hospital from his injuries, it said.

Stampede leaves 21 dead in Indonesia

AFP, Jakarta

At least 21 people were killed in a stampede in Indonesia on Monday as they crowded an alley to receive a cash handout for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, police said.

Another 11 people were injured in the crush as thousands packed the narrow sidestreet in Pasuruan, East Java province, to receive a cash gift of 30,000 rupiah (3.30 dollars) each from a rich family, police said.

"Some 21 people were killed and 11 people were injured," local police chief Adu Sunarto said.

Muslims are supposed to abstain from eating, drinking and having sex from dawn to dusk during Ramadan. At night they break their fast with relatively lavish family meals that often include expensive treats.

Cash handouts are a common form of charity favoured by wealthy Indonesians during the holy month.

"It's an annual activity from that family but there were a lot more people lining up today than in previous years," Pasuruan mayor Aminurrahman told ElShinta radio.

He said there were at least 2,500 people in the alley when the stampede began for unknown reasons.

Two infants died, 1,253 sickened in China

AP, Beijing

China's Health Ministry says two infants have died from ingesting contaminated milk powder and 1,253 have been sickened.

Hundreds more remain under observation in hospitals, the ministry says.

As of Monday morning, 913 infants are only slightly affected and their condition was not considered life threatening, Vice Health Minister Ma Xiaowei told reporters at a news conference in Beijing. However, 340 remain hospitalized and 53 cases were considered especially severe, he said. No information was given about the fatalities, although authorities had earlier announced one death. The number of diagnosed cases of contamination with the industrial chemical melamine was more than double the previous figure of about 580.

Obama raises $66m in August, a monthly record

Internet

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama raised more than $66 million in August for his campaign against Republican John McCain, a one-month record.

The Obama campaign added 500,000 new donors en route to surpassing a previous monthly record of $55 million, campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in an e-mail. McCain campaign manager Rick Davis earlier said the candidate raised $50 million last month. The haul may reassure some Democrats who have been worried that donations for Obama were starting to fall off. Obama has a greater fundraising burden than McCain because Obama decided to bypass public financing for the general election, banking on the idea that he can raise more than the $84.1 million grant and not have to abide by corresponding spending limits.

"The 500,000 new donors to the Obama campaign demonstrate just how strongly the American people are looking to kick the special interests out and change Washington," Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, said in a statement. The campaign said it has now gotten donations from 2.5 million people.

Obama's campaign said it had more than $77 million in cash at the end of August. He got at least $10 million more soon after, when his campaign had a record fundraising day after Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin gave her nomination acceptance speech on Sept. 3 in St. Paul, Minnesota.