Deutsche Welle
English Service News
October 28th, 2001, 16:00 UTC
Suspected Palestinian gunmen have killed at least two passersby in
the northern Israel city of Hadera, and wounded another 14, throwing
delayed Israeli withdrawals from West Bank towns further into doubt.
Officials and witnesses said two gunmen, who'd opened fire from a car
in Hadera's busy shopping area, were then shot dead by police. Hours
earlier, an Israeli was fatally attacked at a kibbutz nearby.
Responsibility for that killing was claimed by the Fatah movement.
Israel's government has come under mounting U.S. pressure to withdraw
its troops, noteably from Bethlehem and Beit Jala, but said it would
only do so if attacks by Palestinian militants ceased. Israel began
its incursions after a cabinet minister was murdered 10 days ago.
The U.S. bombing of Afghanistan has entered its fourth week amid
eyewitness claims that stray bombs have killed at least 12 civilians
in Kabul and another at a village north beyond Taliban frontlines.
News agencies say the incidents happened as waves of warplanes aimed
at Taliban positions on Saturday and early Sunday. A second Red Cross
compound in Kabul was hit on Friday. In Pakistan, thousands of armed
Taliban sympathisers have assembled near the border in defiance of
the Pakistani government's allegiance to the USA. Militants are also
reported to be blocking a road on the border with China.
Also in Pakistan, masked gunmen on motorcycles have shot dead 16
Protestant Christians at Sunday prayers as they used a Roman Catholic
church in the central Pakistani town of Bahawalpur.
Police and intelligence sources said they they could not exclude the
possibility of a reprisal for the U.S.-led air strikes against
Afghanistan. Dozens of other churchgoers were wounded. Pope John Paul
-the-second condemned Sunday's attack as an "act if intolerance".
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf accused "trained terrorists" of
trying to sow sectarian strife. The area, near the Indian border, has
a history of strife between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim extremists.
Visiting Islamabad, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has said any
post-Taliban government set up in Afghanistan would need United
Nations protection. Making the first stopover of his tour of Asia,
Schroeder said he was firmly opposed to any let-up in the U.S.-led
air raids until the Taliban was driven from power. President
Musharraf said the military campaign, as much as possible, should be
short. Government sources in Berlin had said that apart from the
Afghanistan crisis Schroeder would also discuss the Kashmir conflict.
Schroeder has since arrived New Delhi. He will hold talks with Indian
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on Monday.
A bomb has ripped through food stalls at a plaza in the southern
Philippines port city of Zamboanga, killing at least ten people.
At least 20 other evening diners were injured. No claim of
responsibility has emerged. The blast, thought to be from a homemade
bomb, follows separatist violence in recent weeks, including a blast
involving a similar device near a military compound in the city on
Friday. In the past, Abu Sayyaf militants had warned of attacks on
Zamboanga if troops pressed an offensive. The group still holds a
American missionary couple and eight Filipinos on Basilan island.
South Africa has sent the first of 700 soldiers to Burundi as part of
a peace plan signed last year and mediated by Nelson Mandela.
They'll be joined by troops from Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria. Their
task will be to protect 150 Burundian politicians returning from
exile. One, Jean Minani, of the Hutu-led FRODEBU party, flew into
Bujumbura on Sunday. The plan requires the Tutsi-led government of
Major Pierre Buyoya to make the transition to a new multi-ethnic
government, parliament and army over the next three years. Burundi's
civil-war of the past eight years claimed at least 200,000 lives.
Four days after a fiery head-on crash inside Switzerland's Gotthard
tunnel killed at least 11 motorists, recovery workers have paused for
a church service in the town of Airolo, at the southern end.
Ten of the victims, including four Germans, have been identified,
according to police, who also have 56 reports of missing persons. On
Monday forensic experts will re-enter after workers propped up 200
meters of damaged tunnel ceiling on Saturday. Another of Europe's
main Alpine links, France's Montblanc tunnel, is re-open in
mid-December. It was the scene of a similar fiery pile-up in 1999,
when 39 people were killed. To improve safety, cars will travel in
one direction only, with oncoming traffic diverted to another tunnel.
The Basque separatist guerrilla group ETA, making its first statement
since last month's attacks on the United States, said on Sunday it
wanted peace and blamed Spain and France for perpetuating conflict.
Last week's decision by IRA in Northern Ireland to disarm has
prompted calls from Spanish and mainstream Basque nationalist
political parties for ETA to also end its armed campaign, in which
some 800 people have been killed since 1968.
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