More than 70 migrants died in the Mediterranean..

guardian.co.uk, UK

28/08/08

More than 70 people were feared to have died in the sea south of Malta in one of the worst disasters involving clandestine migrants in the Mediterranean.

Reports of the tragedy emerged the day after similar calamity off Spain, and brought to 100 the number believed to have perished in the Mediterranean this week. The deaths came amid a steep increase in the number of landings on Europe’s southern shores. Police on Malta said eight survivors from a half-sunken dinghy had told them that the boat on which they were trying to reach Europe had set off from Libya with 79 people aboard. They said the migrants had told a horrific tale of hunger and sudden death.

Two days after leaving the port of Zuwara, Libya, their food and water had run out, and the boat’s outboard engine had been torn off. They spent the next seven days adrift in heavy seas as their numbers gradually dwindled.

Some of those aboard died of exposure. Others were swept away by waves breaking over the fragile vessel.

Those who made it to Malta were quoted as saying that most of the would-be migrants who boarded the vessel in Libya had been Sudanese and Eritreans. They were said to have included a child and eight women, four of them pregnant. Sea conditions in the area where the craft was found, 40 nautical miles south of Malta, were reported to be very rough.

The survivors were rescued from their waterlogged boat by the crew of a Maltese fishing vessel. From there, they were transferred to a Maltese naval ship taking part in patrols organised by the EU’s Frontex agency, according to a report from the Maltese capital, Valletta. The earliest accounts referred to 10 dead. But after police questioned the survivors with the help of an interpreter, they said 71 people were believed to be missing.

The last comparable disaster in the area occurred in May 2007, when 53 Eritreans disappeared in rising seas, despite having telephoned appeals for help. The heaviest loss of life was in December 1996, when at least 283 people went to their deaths while being moved from one vessel to another off Sicily.

Neil Falzon, head of the UNHCR office on Malta, said: “Even though they are aware of these tragedies, these people, who are desperate, continue trying to make the journey to Europe”.

A search and rescue aircraft and motor boats of the Maltese armed forces were dispatched to the area where the survivors were picked up, but by last night they had found neither bodies nor more survivors.

“We are doing everything possible to find them,” said General Carmel Vassallo, head of the Maltese armed forces. But he said the survivors had been unable to provide reliable details of their course. “Searching without directions is like searching in the dark,” he said.

There has been a surge in the number of migrants leaving Libya this summer. Numbers reaching Malta and Italy’s southernmost island of Lampedusa have shown sharp increases.

The migrants usually set off aboard semi-rigid inflatable craft made of two inflated chambers and a crude wooden deck. The vessels are designed to carry about 10 people, but are routinely packed with many times more. Even by the pitiless standards of the traffic in humans across the central Mediterranean a boat of this kind with almost 80 people on board would be recklessly overloaded.

On Tuesday, it was reported from Spain that a group of African migrants had recounted throwing overboard the bodies of 25 companions as their overcrowded boat drifted for days in the Mediterranean. The survivors were taken to the southern Spanish port of Málaga.

Eritreans in Saudi Detention Center Begin Hunger….

30/08/08

Christina news

By Michael Ireland

Fourteen Eritreans in a Saudi detention center have

begun a hunger strike to highlight the continuing

plight of Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers.

According to Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), the Eritreans are part of a group of 28 refugees and asylum seekers who have been held in Gizan Detention Center for periods ranging from three to seven years, pending offers of resettlement in third countries.

CSW says that while conditions in Gizan are relatively good, inmates are not allowed to work, study or receive training of any sort. Consequently, many suffer depression due to enforced idleness and separation from families.

The move comes as hundreds of Eritreans in Libya called off a five-day hunger strike aimed at drawing attention to their continued incarceration.

In a media advisory, CSW says 700 Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers have been incarcerated in Libya’s Misrata Detention Center for the last two years, and are being held in cramped and squalid conditions where abuse is rife and food, potable water and medical treatment are scarce.

CSW says the group, which includes around 30 children, recently staged a five-day a hunger strike in the hope of persuading the international community, and particularly the European Union (EU), to urgently facilitate their resettlement in third countries. However, the hunger-strike was called off five days later, following fresh offers of resettlement and promises of improved living conditions.

Meanwhile, at least 1,000 refugees and asylum seekers forcibly returned to Eritrea in June by the Egyptian government have been jailed in Wi’a military camp under conditions of extreme hardship and abuse.

The camp is situated in one of hottest places on earth, used during the Italian colonial era as a place of extreme punishment. Only pregnant women and those with young children have escaped this fate.

In addition, news received in July by the opposition Eritrean Democratic Alliance (EDA) appears to indicate that an unspecified number of returnees may have been executed in military camps in front of fellow prisoners in order to dissuade onlookers from escaping.

CSW’s spokesperson on Sub-Saharan Africa says: “We call on key members of the international community to consider offering sanctuary to Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the thousand men and women currently detained in the Wi’a military camp in Eritrea suffering unimaginable hardship and mistreatment in the most arduous conditions. Their fate should serve as a stark reminder of the appalling consequences of returning vulnerable people to countries where they have a well-founded fear of persecution.”

CSW is a human rights organization which specializes in religious freedom, works on behalf of those persecuted for their Christian beliefs and promotes religious liberty for all.

For CSW’s in depth report on Eritrea click here: http://dynamic.csw.org.uk/country.a…

Malta, a target destination for Africans trying to reach Europe…

Turkishpress.com

27/08/08

Seventy would-be illegal African immigrants to Europe perished when their boat sank in the Mediterranean Sea, according to eight companions rescued Wednesday off Malta, officials said.

If their tale is confirmed, it would be one of the worst such incidents ever recorded off Malta, a target destination for Africans trying to reach Europe in often-flimsy watercraft.

The survivors were plucked out of the water by a Maltese fishing vessel, the Madonna di Pompei, from a semi-submerged dinghy 70 kilometres (40 nautical miles) off Malta, then transferred to a military patrol boat.

An Armed Forces of Malta twin-engine Islander patrol aircraft went out to the area to look for other survivors, but none were found.

It earlier emerged during police questioning that the original group consisted of 79 people — all men, apart from eight women, four of them pregnant, and one child.

But a UN official later placed the original number at 78.

Investigations were continuing, a police spokesman told AFP.

The passengers, all African, had apparently set sail from Libya last Thursday and hit bad weather, said Neil Falzon, a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Malta, who met with the survivors.

Four of those dead were women, three of them pregnant, he said.

“On Monday, the rubber dinghy started taking water and it overturned with the immigrants drowned,” Falzon said. “They just kept holding on to the dinghy until last night they were spotted by the Maltese fishing vessel.”

He identified the immigrants as Eritreans, Ghanaians, Somalians and Sudanese, according to news reports.

“My appeal goes to the government to release these immigrants from the detention centre because of their health and traumatic conditions,” Falzon said, adding that three needed urgent medical care.

Malta, the smallest of the 27 EU member states, is a target for Africans trying to get into Europe by boat from North Africa, with Libya being the most common point of departure.

Some 1,700 illegal immigrants landed on Malta in 2007, according to an AFP count.

On Sunday, more than 100 illegal immigrants were brought ashore in two separate operations off Malta.

The last case of serious loss of life off Malta came in May 2007 when 53 would-be immigrants perished at sea.

“Nothwithstanding that they know about (previous) tragedies, these desperate people still try and make the journey to Europe,” Falzon said.

Some 380 illegal immigrants have died at sea over the first six months of this year in the Sicily Canal, the Mediterranean strip between Sicily and Tunisia, the aid charity Doctors Without Borders estimates.

About 500 died there in 2006.

Elsewhere on the Mediterranean, the crew of a Dubai-bound ship discovered 14 stowaways aboard off the coast of Algeria this week. It turned them all over to the Algerian authorities, coast-guard officials in Algiers said Wednesday.

The hijackers surrendered without any violence and the crew are safe…

Sudanese hijackers surrender in Libya

Kuwait times

27/08/08

TRIPOLI: Two hijackers of a Sudanese plane surrendered to Libyan authorities at a remote desert airport yesterday after freeing all passengers on board, almost 24 hours after the drama began in Darfur. “The hijackers surrendered without any violence and the crew are safe and sound,” a Libyan official said from the airport in Kufra, an oasis in the southeast of the north African country.

The two attackers, who claimed to be from Sudan’s conflict-ridden region of Darfur, hijacked the plane on Tuesday shortly after take-off from Darfur’s main city of Nyala on a flight to the Sudanese capital Khartoum. They gave themselves up several hours after negotiations led to the release of all 87 passengers from the Sun Air Boeing 737 which was forced to land in Kufra on Tuesday evening after it ran short of fuel.

But they had initially refused to release the eight-member crew, demanding that the plane be refuelled for a flight to Paris, an official said. Libyan state television broadcast footage from Kufra, a World War II-era military airport near the Sudanese border, showing visibly tired but relieved passengers surrounded by Libyan soldiers following their liberation. “The night was terrifying and difficult. I thank the Libyan authorities for their efforts which allowed us to be freed,” a Sudanese passenger told
the station.

Another passenger said the hijackers were armed with small calibre pistols.The passengers, who included women and children, had reportedly been given water but no food and some fainted when the air conditioning failed in the searing desert heat. The hijackers, who had refused to talk directly with Libyan officials, said they belong to the Sudanese Liberation Army, whose exiled leader Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur lives in Paris, according to airport director Khaled Saseya.

The unnamed Libyan official who announced the surrender of the hijackers said however that the authorities could still not confirm their identities and that an investigation was being launched. He said a 20-strong Sudanese delegation was in Kufra while a Libyan civilian airline had landed there to take the hijacked plane’s passengers to their original destination of Khartoum.

Sudan foreign ministry spokesman Ali Al-Sadiq condemned the hijacking and called on the Libyan authorities to deport the “terrorists” to Khartoum. Libya’s civil aviation director Mohammed Shlibaq said that two Egyptian members of the UN-led Darfur peacekeeping force, two Ethiopians and a Ugandan were among the passengers, the official JANA news agency reported.

JANA also said several Sudanese officials had been on board, including the tribal affairs adviser at the Provisional Authority in Darfur Yaqub Al-Malik Mohamed Yaqub. No Darfur movement has publicly claimed responsibility, but Sesaya said the hijackers belong to a faction of the Sudanese Liberation Army, whose exiled leader Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur lives in Paris. The pilot said “the hijackers claim to have coordinated with him (Nur) to join him in Paris,” Saseya told JANA.

Nur, whose group was one of two Darfur movements that first rose up against the Arab-dominated government in 2003, denied any involvement while SLA commander Ibrahim al-Hillo suggested the hijackers could be Nur sympathizers. “We don’t have any relation with that hijacking. Civilians, they’re angry, they’ll behave like that. They may agree with Abdul Wahid but in our structure we have no decision like this to hijack a civilian airplane,” Hillo told AFP.

The SLA has fractured into multiple groups headed by different field commanders over the more than five years of war in Sudan’s western Darfur region. The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million fled their homes since war in Darfur erupted in February 2003. Sudan says 10,000 have been killed. Ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Khartoum regime and state-backed Arab militias, fighting for resources andpower. – AFP

1.4 billion are living below the poverty in the world….

World Bank says there are more poor people around the

world

UN Radio

27/08/08

There are more poor people around the world than previously thought, according to economic estimates by the World Bank.

The Bank says the new estimates which sets a new poverty line of $1.25 a day is an improvement in calculating the cost of living in developing countries.

The World Bank says while the new data show that 1.4 billion are living below the poverty line, there has also been success in fighting extreme poverty.

Merrel Tuck, a spokesperson for the World Bank says there is need to redouble efforts to make sure that the goal of reducing the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015 is reached.

“However, the overall trend is still on track. So, despite the higher absolute numbers that are revealed in this new data we are still saying that the Millennium Development Goal in aggregate for all developing regions together is still going to be achieved.”

The World Bank also warns that if the number of poor people continues to grow at current levels in Sub-Saharan Africa, a third of the world’s poor will live in Africa by 2015.

For United Nations Radio, I’m Dianne Penn.

(duration: 1′10″)

Scores dead’ in Pakistan clashes….

BBC NEWS

27/08/08

Pakistan’s military says it has killed 47 pro-Taleban

militants in separate incidents in the rugged west of the

country, bordering Afghanistan.

Thirty-seven militants were killed in helicopter-gunship attacks in Bajaur area, an army spokesman told the BBC.

The figures cannot be confirmed. Locals in Bajaur told the BBC five people had been killed in the violence.

A further 11 militants were killed – and more than 15 hurt – in fighting in South Waziristan, the military said.

According to the military, “around 75 -100 militants attacked Tiarza fort and Tiarza Bridge Check Post in South Waziristan” late on Tuesday.

“Security forces responded effectively and repulsed the attack,” the military said.

Parts of the South Waziristan region, including the town of Wana, were placed under curfew after the clash.

On Thursday, an army convoy in Wana’s main market was attacked by militants.

Locals in Wana have told the BBC the town is currently the scene of fierce fighting between militants and security forces.

Attacks on Taleban

Meanwhile, in the Salarzai area of Bajaur, a suspected member of the Taleban militia has been beaten to death.

The man was attacked near the funeral of two tribal leaders, Malik Zareen and Malik Bakhtawar, who were killed in a rocket attack on Monday.

The leaders had been trying to raise a tribal force to combat the Taleban in the area.

The Taleban denied having anything to do with the rocket attack.

The BBC has learnt that locals in Salarzai have decided to oppose the Taleban.

A building used by the Taleban as their headquarters in the area has been burnt down by armed Salarzai men.

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Goodbye Sheffield Tinsley Towers….

Botched Demolition Of Iconic Towers

SKY NEWS

24/08/08

The demolition of two cooling towers near the M1 in south

Yorkshire has finally been completed after complications.

Hundreds of people had gathered overnight to watch attempts at a controlled explosion of the 250ft Tinsley Towers.

But the 3am blast left a large part of the North Tower still standing.

However, a second blast was carried out and the demolition was completed.

Energy firm E.ON, which owns the towers, wanted to destroy the structures between junctions 32 and 35 after getting permission to build a new biomass power station.

The stretch of the M1 has now reopened, apart from junction 34, which is being examined for safety and not expected to reopen today.

A spokesperson for the Highways Agency urged drivers to avoid the M1 apart from local traffic for Sheffield.

Traffic will now be diverted along the M18 and M62.

The iconic cooling towers are a familiar landmark next to the M1.

For 70 years, they had stood just a few metres from the southbound carriageway of the motorway as it crosses the Don Valley between Sheffield and Rotherham.

After proposals to demolish them were first announced, a local campaign began to save them, with ideas for their future use including making them into massive art works.

E.ON will develop the biomass power station at Blackburn Meadows, which it says will generate enough electricity for around 40,000 homes.

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24/08/08

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