The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Rallies across U.S. assail Obama's proposed gun curbs
- Algeria ends desert siege with 23 hostages dead
- Sudan, South Sudan border talks get nowhere, delay oil exports
| Rallies across U.S. assail Obama's proposed gun curbs Posted: 19 Jan 2013 06:51 PM PST (Reuters) - Pro-gun activists held "high noon" rallies across the United States on Saturday to defend the right to own firearms they say is being threatened by President Barack Obama's gun-control proposals.
The U.S. debate over gun control erupted in mid-December after a man armed with an assault rifle killed 20 first-graders and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut - the deadliest of a string of U.S. shooting sprees last year. "We are law-abiding citizens, business owners, military, and we are not going to be responsible for other people's criminal actions," former Marine Damon Locke said to applause at a Florida rally he had helped organize. Some in the crowd of about 1,000 in Brooksville, about an hour north of Tampa, hoisted signs that said "Stop the Gun Grabbers" and "Gun control isn't about guns, it's about control." Obama and gun control advocates have begun a push to reinstitute a U.S. assault weapons ban following the Connecticut massacre. A number of other states have taken up gun legislation, and New York, with among the strictest gun control laws in the country, broadened its assault weapons ban on Tuesday. Obama has also called for a ban on high-capacity magazines and more stringent background checks for gun purchasers. Coinciding with the pro-gun rights rallies - which took place from Oregon to Connecticut - an accidental shooting at a North Carolina gun show wounded three people including a retired sheriff's deputy. It happened when an owner was taking a 12-gauge shotgun out of its case and the firearm accidentally discharged at the entrance to the show in Raleigh, causing non-life-threatening injuries, state officials said. DEFIANT MOOD In Connecticut, a rally for gun rights drew around 1,000 people at the state Capitol, where lawmakers have reacted to the Newtown shooting with proposals to tighten gun control rules, including limiting access to assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. That does not sit well with gun owner Jessie Buchanan, who attended the rally in Hartford. "They could take away the 10-round magazine today and tomorrow it would be the five-round and the next day it would be the whole thing," Buchanan said. Across the country in Denver, the mood was defiant as about 500 people, including families with children, gathered in unseasonably warm weather outside the state capitol. "I have earned the right to have my guns," said Don Dobyns, an Air Force veteran and former police officer from Colorado Springs, who was among the rally organizers. Sporting a shirt that read, "Girls with guns," 31-year-old Jennifer Burk said: "My parents didn't raise a victim and the government shouldn't try and make me one." Gun control advocates say U.S. civilians have no justifiable need for assault weapons or high-capacity magazines, and they say more background checks will help keep guns out of the hands of criminals. The reaction has been fierce from gun supporters such as the National Rifle Association, who point to a right to bear arms that is enshrined in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and which they do not want to see watered down. Gun-control advocates on Sunday plan to hold a National Gun Prevention Sabbath, where they say 150 houses of worship will call on the faithful to advocate for an "actionable plan to prevent gun violence." People who have lost loved ones to gun violence will display their photographs, organizers said.
Copyright © 2013 Reuters | ||
| Algeria ends desert siege with 23 hostages dead Posted: 19 Jan 2013 04:20 PM PST ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - Algerian troops ended a siege by Islamist militants at a gas plant in the Sahara desert where 23 hostages died, with a final assault which killed all the remaining hostage-takers.
Believed to be among the 32 dead militants was their leader, Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, a Nigerien close to al Qaeda-linked commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar, presumed mastermind of the raid. An Algerian interior ministry statement on the death toll gave no breakdown of the number of foreigners among hostages killed since the plant was seized before dawn on Wednesday. Details are only slowly emerging on what happened during the siege, which marked a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces are ratcheting up a war against Islamist militants in neighbouring Mali. Algeria's interior ministry said on Saturday that 107 foreign hostages and 685 Algerian hostages had survived, but did not give a detailed breakdown of those who died. "We feel a deep and growing unease ... we fear that over the next few days we will receive bad news," said Helge Lund, Chief Executive of Norway's Statoil, which ran the plant along with Britain's BP and Algeria's state oil company. "People we have spoken to describe unbelievable, horrible experiences," he said. British Prime Minister David Cameron said he feared for the lives of five British citizens unaccounted for at the gas plant near the town of In Amenas, which was also home to expatriate workers from Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp and others. One American and one British citizen have been confirmed dead. Statoil said five of its workers, all Norwegian nationals, were still missing. Japanese and American workers are also unaccounted for. The Islamists' attack has tested Algeria's relations with the outside world, exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara and pushed Islamist radicalism in northern Africa to centre stage. Some Western governments expressed frustration at not being informed of the Algerian authorities' plans to storm the complex. Algeria, scarred by a civil war with Islamist insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives, had insisted there would be no negotiation in the face of terrorism. President Barack Obama said on Saturday the United States was seeking from Algerian authorities a fuller understanding of what took place, but said "the blame for this tragedy rests with the terrorists who carried it out." Official sources had no immediate confirmation of newspaper reports suggesting some of the hostages may have been executed by their captors as the Algerian army closed in for the final assault on Saturday. One source close to the crisis said 16 foreign hostages were freed, including two Americans and one Portuguese. BP's chief executive Bob Dudley said on Saturday four of its 18 workers at the site were missing. The remaining 14 were safe. PLANNED BEFORE FRENCH LANDED IN MALI The attack on the heavily fortified gas compound was one of the most audacious in recent years and almost certainly planned long before French troops launched a military operation in Mali this month to stem an advance by Islamist fighters. Hundreds of hostages escaped on Thursday when the army launched a rescue operation, but many hostages were killed. Before the interior ministry released its provisional death toll, an Algerian security source said eight Algerians and at least seven foreigners were among the victims, including two Japanese, two Britons and a French national. One British citizen was killed when the gunmen seized the hostages on Wednesday. The U.S. State Department said on Friday one American, Frederick Buttaccio, had died but gave no further details. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said nobody was going to attack the United States and get away with it. "We have made a commitment that we're going to go after al Qaeda wherever they are and wherever they try to hide," he said during a visit to London. "We have done that obviously in Afghanistan, Pakistan, we've done it in Somalia, in Yemen and we will do it in North Africa as well." Earlier on Saturday, Algerian special forces found 15 unidentified burned bodies at the plant, a source told Reuters. Mauritanian news agencies identified the field commander of the group that attacked the plant as Nigeri, a fighter from one of the Arab tribes in Niger who had joined the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in early-2005. That group eventually joined up with al Qaeda to become Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). It and allied groups are the targets of the French military operation in Mali. The news agencies described him as "one of the closest people" to Belmokhtar, who fought in Afghanistan and then in Algeria's civil war of the 1990s. Nigeri was known as a man for "difficult missions", having carried out attacks in Mauritania, Mali and Niger. NO NEGOTIATION Britain, Japan and other countries have expressed irritation that the Algerian army assault was ordered without consultation. But French President Francois Hollande said the Algerian military's response seemed to have been the best option given that negotiation was not possible. "When you have people taken hostage in such large number by terrorists with such cold determination and ready to kill those hostages - as they did - Algeria has an approach which to me, as I see it, is the most appropriate because there could be no negotiation," Hollande said. The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions over the country's outwardly tough security measures. Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site. Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings. The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in the civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of al Qaeda gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army. (Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Estelle Shirbon and David Alexander in London, Brian Love in Paris; Writing by Giles Elgood and Myra MacDonald)
Algeria says 32 militants, 23 hostages killed at desert plant Four of BP's 18 Algeria gas plant staff still missing Five Norwegian Statoil employees still missing in Algeria Copyright © 2013 Reuters | ||
| Sudan, South Sudan border talks get nowhere, delay oil exports Posted: 19 Jan 2013 03:08 PM PST KHARTOUM/JUBA (Reuters) - Sudan and South Sudan on Saturday failed to agree on how to withdraw armies from their disputed border after a round of talks in Ethiopia, delaying again the resumption of crucial oil exports. The African neighbours came close to war in April in the worst border clashes since South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011 under a 2005 deal which ended decades of civil war. After mediation from the African Union, both countries agreed in September to set up a demilitarized buffer zone and resume oil exports from landlocked South Sudan through Sudan. Oil is vital to both economies. But neither side withdrew its army from the 2,000-km (1,200-mile) border due to mistrust left from one of Africa's longest civil wars. To end the stalemate the AU brought together Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and South Sudan's Salva Kiir two weeks ago in Ethiopia. But after a week of talks in Addis Ababa to discuss how to set up the buffer zone, as agreed by the presidents, both sides accused each other of making new demands. "We were facing difficulties during the talks in Addis Ababa because of the changing position of South Sudan which keeps altering every time we reach an agreement," Sudan's defence minister Abdel-Rahim Mohammed Hussein told reporters after his return at Khartoum airport. Talks would be postponed until February 13, he said. Hussein said South Sudan made new demands for demilitarization of a disputed border area called Mile-14 and had not given up support for rebels fighting Sudan's government. Khartoum accuses Juba of backing Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-North) rebels in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, two Sudan states bordering the South. Juba denies this. The SPLM-North, made up of fighters who sided with the South during the civil war, controls part of the Sudan side of the border, which complicates setting up the buffer zone. South Sudan accused Sudan of refusing to withdraw its forces from the border and making new demands regarding "Mile-14". "The Republic of South Sudan also agreed to resume oil production immediately ... (but) Sudan has refused to accept the oil for processing and transporting in Sudan," until the buffer zone was fully operational, South Sudan said in a statement. MORE DELAYS South Sudan, which says Sudan often bombs its territory, shut down its entire oil output of 350,000 barrels per day (bpd) a year ago after failing to agree export and transit fees with Khartoum. It had hoped to be producing 230,000 bpd by December. Crude from southern fields will take two months to reach the Red Sea terminal on Sudan's coast after output resumes, South Sudan said this month, suggesting exports are unlikely to hit markets until April or even May after the latest delay. The AU had planned to publish last week a timetable for setting up the buffer zone. But in a statement on Saturday it only said both sides had made "substantial progress" and would hold further talks regarding the buffer zone and "the key issue on when oil exports could resume and under what circumstances." It did not say when talks would resume. Apart from oil and the buffer zone, the two countries must also agree on ownership of Abyei and other disputed areas. On Thursday, Juba had raised hope of an understanding when it said it had started withdrawing its army from the border. But it was unclear whether Juba had actually begun pulling out its forces because its military spokesman Philip Aguer told Reuters the army was still awaiting orders to do so. (additional reporting by Aaron Maasho in Addis Ababa; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Jason Webb) Copyright © 2013 Reuters |
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