Chinese police shot dead 13 'thugs' in restive Xinjiang: govt.

BEIJING: Chinese police Saturday shot dead 13 "thugs" in restive Xinjiang after they drove into a police building and set off an explosion, a regional government website said.

"Today thugs crashed a car into the public security building of Kargilik county in Xinjiang´s Kashgar prefecture and set off an explosion. Police took decisive action and shot dead 13 thugs," the official Tianshan web portal reported.

Three police suffered injuries but no other casualties occurred, the report said, without providing further details. It was unclear if the attackers used one or more explosive devices.

Xinjiang, a vast and resource-rich region in China´s far west which is home to the mainly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, has faced a series of violent attacks in recent years.

Authorities have vowed to crackdown in recent weeks and announced a number of arrests and sentences following several high-profile attacks.

Minority MPA shot dead by bodyguard in Quetta

 

QUETTA: Minority MPA Handery Masieh, who belonged to the ruling National Party (NP) in Balochistan, was shot dead by his bodyguard here in the Nawan Killi area on Saturday.
Official sources said MPA Handery Masieh along with his nephew Owais Masieh was heading towards his vehicle that was parked near his home in Nawan Killi, when they were attacked. The attacker sprayed bullets from his automatic weapon injuring the MPA and his nephew. Later, the MPA succumbed to his injuries on his way to hospital.

Reports suggested that the incident happened at around 1:15pm. The attacker fled the scene after the incident.

Official sources said the MPA was hit by two bullets, one each in the head and neck.

Police and FC officials rushed to the spot and started the probe into the matter.

Balochistan Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch expressed deep grief over the cold-blooded murder of his party’s senior activist. He said he had directed top police officials to apprehend the murderer.

The body of the MPA was later shifted to Civil Hospital for autopsy.

Moving scenes were witnessed in Civil Hospital where people belonging to the Christian community strongly protested the killing of their leader. They blocked Jinnah Road for several hours and chanted slogans against the cold-blooded murder of the MPA. They demanded of the government to apprehend those involved in the killing.

The murder created tension in the provincial capital and the law enforcement agencies were deployed in the Nawan Killi area to prevent any violent reaction to the assassination. The law enforcement agencies also set up checkposts to apprehend the culprit.

Agencies add: Handery Masieh belonged to Balochistan’s Mastung district and was an active leader of the ruling NP.

“The same guard was serving with Handery Masieh for the past 15 years,” Rehmat Baloch, provincial health minister, said.

Abdul Razzaq Cheema, the city’s police chief, said: “The bodyguard had some personal dispute with Handery Masieh’s nephew and both had a brawl outside the residence of the lawmaker. “The bodyguard opened fire on the nephew as Handery came out of his home to stop him. He was hit in the neck and died on the way to hospital.”

Cheema added that the bodyguard was “loyal” and bore Handery no personal enmity.

President Mamnoon Hussain, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, former president Asif Ali Zardari, Speaker National Assembly Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi and MQM chief Altaf Hussain strongly condemned the assassination of Handery Masieh.

In their separate messages, they expressed sympathies with the bereaved family and prayed for eternal peace of the departed soul.

Five dead in ‘tragic’ Las Vegas shooting

WASHINGTON: Two Las Vegas police officers and a civilian were killed in an apparent ambush Sunday that ended with the two gunmen killing themselves.

One of the attackers yelled "This is the start of a revolution" before shooting the officers and stripping them of their weapons and ammunition, the Las Vegas Review-Journal said.

Two officers were "ambushed" and shot by the gunmen -- a man and a woman -- as they ate lunch at CiCi´s Pizza, Sheriff Douglas Gillespie told reporters. One of the officers died at the scene, while the second subsequently died in surgery.

A police dispatch call was made around 11:22 am (1822 GMT). The attackers then ran across the parking lot to a nearby Walmart store, and the Review-Journal said they exchanged gunfire with and ultimately killed a civilian who was carrying a concealed weapon. The civilian, who has not yet been identified, was found dead inside the front door.

"It´s a tragic day, it´s a very, very difficult day but we still have a community to police and we still have a community to protect," Gillespie said. "We will be out there doing it with our heads held high but an emptiness in our hearts."

The male shooter, described as a tall white man, yelled "everyone get out" before shooting, Assistant Sheriff Kevin McMahill told a news conference earlier.

The two gunmen, who have not yet been named, then went to the back of the Walmart for "some kind of suicide pact," McMahill added.

Gillespie said a preliminary investigation suggested the woman had first shot the man before taking her own life.

"What precipitated this event, we do not know," Gillespie said.

"My officers were simply having lunch when the shooting started."

Gillespie named the slain officers as Alyn Beck, 42, and Igor Soldo, 32. He said they both had young families "devastated" by the tragedy.

"We have lost two officers with young families and a family of law enforcement that cares very, very much about them, as well as a community that cares very, very much about them as well as the innocent citizen that lost their life," he said.

Las Vegas police are doubling up their patrols in the wake of the incident. (AFP)

Over 50 dead in Afghan flooding

KABUL: Flooding in a remote part of northern Afghanistan has claimed more than 50 lives and forced thousands to flee their homes, a provincial official said Saturday.

Lt. Fazel Rahman, the police chief in the Guzirga i-Nur district of Baghlan province, said 54 bodies have been recovered, including the remains of women and children, but many others are still missing.

He said the death toll could climb to 100 and called for emergency assistance from the federal government. "So far no one has come to help us. People are trying to find their missing family members," Rahman said, adding that the district´s police force was overstretched by the scale of the disaster.

Guzirga i-Nur district is located more than 140 kilometers (85 miles) north of the provincial capital Puli Khumri. Jawed Basharat, the spokesman for the Baghlan provincial police, said they were aware of the flooding, but that it would take eight to nine hours for them to reach the remote and mountainous area.

‘Hundreds dead’ in Boko Haram village rampage

MAIDUGURI: Hundreds of people are feared dead in a suspected Boko Haram attack on four villages in northeast Nigeria, in the latest upsurge in violence claiming increasing numbers of civilian lives.

Some community leaders put the death toll from the Tuesday attacks in the Gwoza district of Borno state as high as 400 to 500, although there was no independent verification because of poor communications in the remote area.

If confirmed, the attacks in the villages of Goshe, Attagara, Agapalwa and Aganjara would be among the deadliest in the five-year insurgency and top the more than 300 who were killed on May 5 in nearby Gamboru Ngala.

"The killings are massive but nobody can give a toll for now because nobody has been able to go to that place because the insurgents are still there. They have taken over the whole area," lawmaker Peter Biye told.

"There are bodies littered over the whole area and people have fled," added Biye, who represents Gwoza in Nigeria´s lower chamber of parliament, the House of Representatives.

Boko Haram´s bloody reign of terror in northeast Nigeria is forcing 800 people to flee from their homes every day and has claimed more than 3,000 lives in the past year, the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said.

Another 45 people were killed when suspected Boko Haram gunmen pretending to be itinerant preachers opened fire on a crowd in the village of Barderi near the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, on Wednesday evening.

One survivor, Mallam Bunu, said: "They... lied to us that they had come to preach to us and when almost all the villagers had gathered, another set of insurgents emerged from nowhere and opened fire on the congregation before we all scampered for safety."

On Thursday four people were killed near the home of a state governor in northeast Nigeria when a pick-up truck loaded with grain bags exploded, a government source told.

The blast happened near the private residence of Gombe state governor Ibrahim Dankwambo in the upscale Government Reserve area of the state capital.

Gombe state borders Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, which have been at the centre of the violence.

A separate attack was reported on Thursday in the town of Madagali, just 25 kilometres (15 miles) by road from Gwoza in Adamawa state.

Gunmen razed a Roman Catholic church and torched a local government office after firing at troops manning a nearby checkpoint, said the chairman of the local government in the town, Maina Ularamu.

No deaths had been confirmed, he added, although one resident reported that two civilians were killed in the crossfire.

No one to bury the dead
Reports from Gwoza said the insurgents were stealing livestock and food and burning property with impunity, despite a year-long state of emergency in the restive region.

"Hundreds of dead bodies are lying there... because there is nobody that will bury them," said one community leader in Attagara, who requested anonymity.

He said the attackers on Tuesday only spared women and that young boys were "snatched from the backs of their mothers and killed".

Men, women and children fled the villages but gunmen on motorcycles tracked them down, shooting as they ran, he added.

Gwoza shares a border with Cameroon and is surrounded by mountains and the Sambisa forest, a known Boko Haram stronghold and the focus for a Nigerian military search for more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped on April 14.

Many people fled across the border as soldiers were deployed to fight the heavily armed militants, who hoisted their black flag over at least seven villages, Biye said on Wednesday.

The community leader described the situation as a grave "humanitarian crisis", while others called for relief agencies to be allowed in to enable the dead to be buried.

Another elder, Zakari Habu, said women and the elderly were in desperate need of food, water, medication and shelter.

Nigeria´s National Emergency Relief Agency (NEMA) has previously said the country faces huge pressures in dealing with internally displaced people from Boko Haram attacks.

The IDMC, run by the Norwegian Refugee Council, added that 3.3 million Nigerians have been driven from their homes by the insurgency and other violence.

Twenty-two dead in southwest China coal mine accident

BEIJING: Twenty-two people were killed in an accident at a coal mine in the southwest Chinese city of Chongqing on Tuesday, state media reported.

The accident at the Yanshitai coal mine in Chongqing municipality´s Wansheng district occurred at around 5.40pm and was described as a "gas incident" by local authorities, official news agency Xinhua said.

Rescuers have recovered the bodies of all the missing miners, the news agency reported, citing local authorities.

Six of the 28 miners who were working in the shaft at the time of the incident managed to escape, Xinhua said.

The coal mine is owned by state-owned Nantong Mining Company, Xinhua reported.

Mining accidents are common in China, the world´s largest consumer of coal, where mine operators often skirt safety regulations.

The accident comes after 20 people died in April when a coal mine in China´s southwest Yunnan province suddenly flooded, leaving miners trapped.

Last year, China recorded 589 mining-related accidents, leaving 1,049 people dead or missing, according to the government. But both the number of accidents and fatalities were down more than 24 percent from 2012. (AFP)

Banda singer 'Tito Torbellino' shot dead in Mexico

MEXICO CITY: A US-born singer of northern Mexican "banda" music has been shot to death at a restaurant in the border state of Sonora.

State police in Sonora said Tomas Tovar Rascon was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and was shot several times at the restaurant in Ciudad Obregon.

Tovar Rascon, 33, was better known by his stage name, "Tito Torbellino."

His Facebook page said he was scheduled to perform at a concert in Ciudad Obregon on Friday. A US booking agent listed for Torbellino confirmed his death.

Police said two gunmen entered the restaurant Thursday and shot Tovar Rascon at close range. He died on the way to a local hospital.

Members of other musical groups have been murdered in Mexico in recent years, usually groups that perform "narcocorridos" that celebrate the exploits of drug traffickers.

But while some guns appear in Torbellino's music videos, his songs mainly focused on unrequited love, not drug gangs.

Experts say drug capos sometimes target musicians because of their ties to rival groups, or sentimental involvements.

In 2013, South Texas singer Jesus "Chuy" Quintanilla was found shot in the head near Mission, Texas. Quintanilla was well known for his ballads, including some about the exploits of Mexican drug cartels.

Elijah Wald, author of the book, "Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns and Guerrillas," noted previous victims have included singers of a number of genres, not only narcocorridos. Getting entangled with the girlfriend of a criminal, for example, could be dangerous.

"In that world, it's probably more dangerous to be singing romantic songs than narcocorridos because it increases the chances that somebody's girlfriend will suddenly decide that you're the cutest thing ever," he said.

Wald said he didn't have any information on the motive in the Torbellino's killing, but noted that the singer appears only recently to have become successful.

"It's often just a matter of somebody sponsoring someone who isn't paying them back or isn't being properly respectful once they make it," Wald.

"You're in a world where's it's very, very easy to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or have the wrong friends or look sideway at the wrong girl. The list of things you can do wrong once you're in that world gets very large."

One dead, 23 injured in Thai quake: official

BANGKOK: An elderly woman died and 23 other people were injured after a strong earthquake shook northern Thailand, an official said Tuesday, as aftershocks continued to rattle the mountainous region popular with tourists.

The 83-year-old woman died when a wall in her house collapsed after the 6.0-magnitude struck quake on Monday afternoon, according to an official at the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department in Bangkok. "Twenty-three people were also injured in separate incidents caused by the quake," the official told AFP, without giving further details.

The quake, which struck at a shallow depth of just 7.4 kilometres (4.5 miles), had its epicentre in the remote Phan district of Chiang Rai province, geologists said, and was felt hundreds of miles to the south in Bangkok and even in Myanmar´s commercial capital Yangon.

"Since last evening (Monday) there were six large aftershocks with a magnitude between 5.0 to 5.9 and the last was this morning," Burin Wechbunthung, of the Meteorological Department told, adding there were a dozen smaller tremors.

Residents on Monday said they had seen cracked building facades, broken shop windows and damage to roads, while power was cut for several hours in Phan.

The area is a remote mountain retreat near the border with Myanmar and Laos and popular with foreign visitors. The quake was felt in the tourist hub city of Chiang Mai 160 kilometres (100 miles) southwest of Chiang Rai and as far away as Bangkok, 800 kilometres to the south, where tall buildings shook for several seconds.

Major earthquakes are rare in Thailand, although tremors often strike the north of the country.

 

Passenger train derails in India; at least 10 dead

NEW DELHI: A passenger train derailed in western India on Sunday, killing at least 10 people and injuring 57 others.

The engine and four coaches jumped the tracks near Roha station, 110 kilometers (70 miles) south of Mumbai, said police officer Ankush Shinde.

The rescuers used gas cutters to open the derailed coaches to reach those trapped inside. Big cranes were deployed to remove these coaches from the rail track, Shinde said.

Two of the derailed coaches tilted on one side, said railway spokesman Anil Kumar Saxena.

Shinde said that 57 injured passengers, some of them in serious condition, were taken to a hospital.

The cause of the accident was not immediately known.

Train movement in the area was suspended as the derailed coaches and the rescue operation blocked an adjacent track as well.

Railway accidents are common in India, which has one of the world´s largest train networks and serves 20 million passengers a day. Most accidents are blamed on poor maintenance and human error. (AP)

19 dead in Iraq as pilgrims, family targeted: officials

SAMARRA: Militants have attacked a bus carrying pilgrims north of Baghdad, killing 11 people, while a family of eight was shot dead south of the capital, Iraqi officials said Sunday.

The bloodshed late Saturday comes during vote counting from the April 30 general election, the first since US troops withdrew in late 2011, and amid a protracted surge in nationwide unrest.

While officials are quick to blame external factors for the violence, analysts and diplomats say widespread anger among minority is also a key cause.

In the deadliest attack, a bombing and shooting targeting the bus of pilgrims killed 11 people and wounded 21, police and a doctor said.

The pilgrims were returning from Samarra north of the capital, when a roadside bomb blast on the outskirts of the town of Balad was followed by gunmen opening fire on the bus.

Also on Saturday evening, police found the bodies of eight family members shot dead inside their home in southeast of Baghdad.

It was unclear why the family had been targeted or who killed them. (AFP)

 

Around 2,500 people feared dead: Badakhshan Governor

MAZAR-I-SHARIF: More than 300 people were killed and hundreds of others feared dead after a landslide buried an Afghan village, officials said, as rescue teams on Saturday rushed to the scene in the hope of finding any survivors.

Local people used shovels to search for anyone trapped under a massive river of mud and rocks that engulfed the village in Badakhshan province, leaving little sign of the hundreds of homes it destroyed.

The United Nations confirmed that 350 people were dead, and provincial officials said more than 2,000 were still missing more than 20 hours after the disaster.

Emergency workers arrived at the scene on Saturday morning to be confronted by the enormous scale of the landslide, hundreds of homeless families and the risk of more earth sweeping down the hillside.

Badakhshan governor Shah Waliullah Adeeb told AFP that 2,500 people were missing. "Our initial findings based on local people´s reports show around 2,500 people, including women and children, might be dead," he said late Friday. "It is difficult to get confirmed information from the scene and we are seeking to determine the facts.

"Provincial officials said that two successive landslides hit Aab Bareek village within one hour. Villagers were at Friday prayers in two mosques when they were entombed by a tide of debris, and the second landslide hit many who had rushed to assist those in need.

"The number of deceased has increased to 350," the UN mission in Afghanistan said. "A response is being mobilised for those who survived but were displaced, with some partners already on the ground."

The NATO military Regional Command in the north (is) in contact with the Afghan National Army in regards to search and rescue efforts.

"Badakhshan is a remote, mountainous province in northeast Afghanistan bordering Tajikistan, China and Pakistan. It has been relatively peaceful since the US-led military intervention began in 2001, but has seen increasing Taliban activity in recent years.

President Hamid Karzai expressed his condolences to those affected and said immediate action was being taken to find any survivors. Local officials said that the landslides occurred at about midday (0730 GMT) in the Argo district of Badakhshan after days of heavy rain. Between 350 and 400 houses were destroyed, they said. "It is a disaster.

The landslide has affected around 1,000 families," Sayed Abdullah Homayun Dehqan, provincial director of the Afghan National Disaster Management Authority, told AFP. "Around 300 families are missing, that could involve around 2,000 people. People are working to remove the rocks. "Around 700 families were rescued, we have sent in some basic assistance such as tents and blankets.

"The UN was helping to coordinate relief work, but warned that roads to the area could not take heavy machinery. "The foremost priority at the moment is saving as many lives as possible of those still beneath the rubble," Mark Bowden, UN humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan, said.

US President Barack Obama described the deaths as "an awful tragedy" and pledged to help the relief effort. The landslides follow recent severe flooding in other parts of northern Afghanistan, with 150 people dead and 67,000 people affected by floods in Jowzjan, Faryab and Sar-e-Pul provinces. Nearly 3,500 houses were damaged and destroyed by the floods, creating an urgent need for shelter, clean water, medical supplies and food. Flooding and landslides often occur during the spring rainy season in northern Afghanistan, with flimsy mud houses offering little protection against rising water levels and torrents of mud.

In the last major flooding in Afghanistan, 40 people died in August in flash floods in eastern and southeastern provinces and some districts of the capital Kabul.

60 militants dead after major attack on Afghan army post

 

KABUL: Afghan forces repulsed an assault by hundreds of militants, many from across the border, officials said on Wednesday, in the biggest clashes since the presidential election almost four weeks ago.
NATO air support was called in to help beat back the attack that left 60 militants and at least five Afghan soldiers dead at an army base near the porous border on Monday night. “A group of terrorists and foreign fighters numbering about 500... launched a big operation targeting army posts in Zirok district of Paktika province,” the Afghan defence ministry said in a statement.

It said the militants were trying to score a high-profile victory after failing to mount a significant attack on polling day despite threatening to target voters, election officials and security forces.

The Afghan National Directorate of Security, the country’s intelligence agency, said 300 fighters from the Haqqani network, which is allied to the Taliban, and other insurgents were involved.

“Haqqani and foreign fighters along with suicide attackers carried out an assault on the night of April 28 to capture a military base in Zirok district,” it said. “As a result of a counter-attack by government forces backed by coalition air force, 60 members of the Haqqani group and other foreign fighters were killed and a large number injured.”

The Haqqani network is blamed for some of the deadliest attacks in Afghanistan, including bombings of the US and Indian embassies in Kabul. A Haqqani source in Pakistan confirmed Monday’s incident to AFP. “Allied forces and the Afghan army retaliated to the assault and killed 60 fighters,” he said.

“The fighters left and took with them 40 bodies of their colleagues and 12 Afghan soldiers who were alive.” The Haqqani source said the bodies of 20 militants were with the Afghans and a message had been sent offering to exchange the captured soldiers for them. Afghan officials said only one soldier had been taken hostage

New tornadoes tear through US South, 17 dead

WASHINGTON: Fresh storms hit Mississippi and the US Southeast Monday, threatening tens of millions of people a day after tornadoes killed 17 and ripped up homes in nearby states.

A tornado swept through the northern city of Tupelo around 2.30 pm (1930 GMT), the National Weather Service said, adding that a crew was en route to survey the damage.

Parts of Alabama were also at high risk of severe storms, with a moderate risk affecting portions of Louisiana, Tennessee and Mississippi as the system traveled east, with numerous tornadoes expected.

The National Weather Service said more than 49 million people living in the watch areas were threatened by the storms, upwards of 1.4 million of them in high-risk areas.

In the hardest-hit parts of Arkansas, emergency crews intensified their search for survivors, as residents of the close-knit community of Vilonia surveyed the damage.

Dozens of Arkansas National Guard troops were assisting local authorities with medical evacuations, fresh water deliveries and search and rescue operations.Vilonia police chief Brad McNew said the town of 4,000 had been rendered unrecognizable.

"It´s houses completely down to the foundations," he told NBC television. Through the night, rescuers used searchlights in blacked-out areas, sifting through mountains of rubble in the hopes of finding someone alive.

The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management said 14 people had been killed in the state -- an earlier figure of 15 was revised as one victim was counted twice -- while an official in Oklahoma state said there were at least two tornado victims there.

Local media reported another fatality in the state of Iowa. McNew said more would have been killed if not for emergency sirens that warned people the twister was about to hit.

"I went to a tornado shelter myself with my family which was a couple miles away from where we were at.

A lot of people in the community were there. And so, it did work," he said."If you see the destruction that is here, even though we´ve lost some lives, there are many lives that was saved because of the storm warnings.

"Vilonia was struck three years ago by a tornado that took almost the same path, but Sunday´s twister was "a lot worse," McNew said.

Twisters also devastated large sections of the town of Mayflower, population 2,300, just northwest of the Arkansas state capital, Little Rock.

Rivals trade fire leaves three dead in Bannu

BANNU: Three persons were killed in firing on Sunday here, Geo News reported.

Police said that three persons were killed as the two rival groups traded fire at Township here. The accused after firing fled away from the scene of incident, police said.

Police have started the investigations.

Syria's Daraa clahses leave 88 dead in two days: monitor

BEIRUT: At least 88 rebel and regime forces have been killed in two days of clashes for control of strategic sites in Syria´s southern Daraa province, an monitoring group said Saturday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights based in Britain said 45 opposition fighters and 43 regime forces had been killed in the fighting that began on Thursday.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that rebel forces, including fighters from Al-Qaeda´s Syria affiliate Al-Nusra Front, had seized the strategic Tal al-Jabiyeh hill on Thursday. Clashes were continuing as the opposition fighters sought to take another hilltop nearby in a bid to connect territory they hold in Daraa and the Quneitra region, alongside the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The Observatory said rebel forces had seized weapons and ammunition during the clashes and that regime forces had called in support from heavy artillery and helicopters to try to retake the hill.

On Saturday, Abdel Rahman said, the opposition was focusing its efforts on capturing Tal Jamu, some five kilometres (three miles) from Tal al-Jabiyeh, in a bid to link areas under its control.

Rival groups’ clash leaves 17 dead in North Waziristan

MIRANSHAH: A fierce clash between two rival groups has killed 17 persons in North Waziristan in the past three days, Geo News reported on Saturday.

According to the official sources, the violent clash between Pipli and Madakhel groups over disputed land is continuing for the past three days in data Khel Tehsil of North Waziristan. Due to the dispute, 17 persons have so far lost their lives while 14 others got injured.

Both the groups are fearlessly using missile, tanks, rockets and other automatic weapons against each other.

Tension has gripped the area due to which the local residents are migrating to other safer areas.

Rival groups’ clash leaves 17 dead in North Waziristan

MIRANSHAH: A fierce clash between two rival groups has killed 17 persons in North Waziristan in the past three days, Geo News reported on Saturday.

According to the official sources, the violent clash between Pipli and Madakhel groups over disputed land is continuing for the past three days in data Khel Tehsil of North Waziristan. Due to the dispute, 17 persons have so far lost their lives while 14 others got injured.

Both the groups are fearlessly using missile, tanks, rockets and other automatic weapons against each other.

Tension has gripped the area due to which the local residents are migrating to other safer areas.

Islamabad: armed clash leaves two dead, five injured

ISLAMABAD: At least two people were killed and five others sustained bullet injuries in armed clash between two groups here on Tuesday night, Geo News reported.

Police said exchange of fire took place within the limits of Bara Kahu police station. The dead and injured have been shifted to hospital.

More dead pigs found in China river: report

BEIJING: At least 170 dead pigs have been found in a Chinese river, state media reported Thursday -- the latest in a string of similar incidents that have raised fears over food safety.

The animals were found floating in a tributary of China´s second-longest waterway, the Yellow River, in northwestern Qinghai province, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The grim discovery follows a series of scandals involving dead pigs in Chinese rivers. Last year 16,000 carcasses were found drifting through the main waterway of the commercial hub of Shanghai.

In Qinghai -- the furthest west such an incident has been reported -- "the source of the dead pigs is still under investigation," Xinhua said, citing local authorities.

Industry analysts say sick pigs are sometimes dumped in rivers by farmers hoping to avoid paying the costs of disposing of the animals by other means.

Around 500 dead pigs are recovered every month from a Chinese reservoir in the southwestern province of Sichuan, state-run media reported in March.

Authorities also found 157 dead pigs last month in a river in central Jiangxi province. China is a major producer of pork, which surveys have found to be the country´s most popular meat.

 

2 dead as South Korea ferry with 476 passengers sinks

AP/Yonhap Helicopters try to rescue passengers from a sinking ferry off the southern coast in South Korea on Wednesday.

Dozens of military boats and helicopters scrambled on Wednesday to rescue more than 470 people, including 325 high school students on a school trip, after a ferry sank off South Korea’s southern coast, killing at least two and injuring 14, officials said.

The ferry with 476 people was sailing to the southern island of Jeju when it sent a distress call on Wednesday morning after it began leaning to one side, according to Ministry of Security and Public Administration. The government said about 95 per cent of the ship was submerged.

Two Coastguard officers said that a 27-year-old woman named Park Ji-yeong and another unidentified person had died. One of the officers said 180 passengers had been rescued so far, but gave no further details, including what caused the ship to sink or the conditions of the other passengers.

A student, Lim Hyung-min, told broadcaster YTN from a gym on a nearby island that he jumped into the ocean wearing a life jacket with other students and then swam to a nearby rescue boat.

“As the ship was shaking and tilting, we all tripped and bumped into each another,” Mr. Lim said, adding that some people were bleeding. Once he jumped, the ocean “was so cold. ... I was hurrying, thinking that I wanted to live.”

Local media ran photos showing the partially submerged ship tilting dramatically as helicopters flew overhead and rescue vessels and a small boat covered with an orange tarp over it floated nearby.

The students are from a high school in Ansan city near Seoul and they were on their way to the Jeju island for a four-day trip, according to a relief team set up by Gyeonggi Province, which governs the city. The ship left Incheon port, just west of Seoul, on Tuesday evening, according to Busan Regional Maritime Affairs & Port Administration.

At the high school, students were sent home and parents gathered for news about the ferry.

A total of 16 helicopters, 34 rescue vessels and Navy divers were sent to the area, Lee Gyeong-Og, a vice minister for South Korea’s Public Administration and Security Ministry, told a televised news conference. He said President Park Geun-hye ordered a thorough rescue operation to prevent deaths. He said 14 had been injured so far, including one described as serious, and taken to hospitals.

Mr. Lee said that Navy special forces and an underwater demolition team would help rescue passengers who’d jumped into the water as the ship sank.