BEIJING ( 13 Die in Attack on Police Station in Northwest China )

BEIJING – At least 13 people died on Saturday in a new attack on a police station in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang, where tensions between the Communist regime and extremist Muslim groups have increased over the past few months.

According to the official news agency Xinhua citing local authorities, the 13 dead were part of a group of assailants gunned down by security forces, while three police officers suffered slight wounds in the clash.

The same sources said that no civilians were killed or wounded in the attack.

For its part, local media reported that a truck crashed into the police station in the city of Yecheng in the southern part of Xinjiang province, and that those riding in it detonated several explosive devices before they were brought down by security forces.

The Xinjiang autonomous region remains a scene of violence in China after decades of conflict between the Uygurs and the majority Han ethnicity.

Beijing says there are extremist groups in this region, many headed by Uygurs, who demand independence for this territory under the name of East Turkestan.

For their part, Uygur groups in exile complain that Beijing uses accusations of terrorism as an excuse to repress their religion and culture, and say that the recent increase of ethnic clashes is due to the “persistent” violation of their human rights.

Over the past five years the number of victims related to clashes between the authorities and these groups or from terrorist attacks stands at around 400.

One of the worst attacks was launched last May 22 when two vehicles ran over people at a crowded street market in the town of Urumqi, capital of the region, leaving 39 dead and almost 100 injured.

In recent months, some attacks have also occurred outside the region, something unprecedented up to now, which has spurred Chinese authorities to roll out an antiterrorist campaign and to heighten surveillance around the country

CAIRO ( 183 Islamists Sentenced to Death, Including Head of Muslim Brotherhood )

CAIRO – The criminal court of Minya in southern Egypt on Saturday sentenced to death 183 alleged followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its leader Mohammed Badie, for disturbances and acts of violence in that province last August.

According to the state news agency MENA, another 496 out of a total 683 accused were pardoned, while four people received life sentences.

Around 120 of the accused are in custody for the premeditated murder of a police officer, while the rest were sentenced for rebellion.

Judicial sources told Efe that the accused who are being tried in absentia face harsher sentences, which can later be revised if they finally show up in court.

The defendants found guilty were charged with homicide, attempted murder, robbery, use of deadly force, mob attacks on public installations, arson and unlicensed possession of firearms.

The court, presided by controversial Judge Said Youssef, handed down the final verdict after receiving the non-binding opinion of Egypt’s Grand Mufti Shawqi Alam, to whom he sent a previous verdict with 683 death sentences last April to seek his guidance, as is mandatory under Egyptian law.

People close to those on trial, waiting at the courthouse door, were astonished by the sentences and confused by the different versions offered by the defendants’ lawyers after the trial, eyewitnesses told Efe.

The incidents go back to last August when a wave of violence shook the village of al-Adwa in Minya province, after the dismantling of camps in the Cairo squares of Rabaa El-Adawiya and Nahda where the Islamists had gathered to protest the military ouster of Mohamed Morsi.

LA PAZ ( 13 Die in Truck-Bus Collision in Northern Bolivia )

LA PAZ – Thirteen people died on Saturday in Bolivia when a truck and a bus slammed into each other on the highway between the Andean provinces of Oruro and La Paz, police officials said.

The accident occurred around 6:30 a.m. near the community of San Antonio when the two vehicles collided head-on, Erbol radio reported, citing local police.

In the accident, whose causes are as yet unknown and are under police investigation, another five people were injured and were taken to a hospital in the city of El Alto, near La Paz.

Pakistan woman raped and hanged from tree

LAHORE, Pakistan: A 21-year-old woman was raped and hanged from a tree in Pakistan, police said, in a case bearing a chilling resemblance to a spate of recent sex crimes that sparked outrage in neighboring India.
The woman’s boyfriend of six months, named by police as Muhammad Saqib, was taken into custody after he confessed to the rape and murder.
Saqib admitted he tried to force the woman — the daughter of blind parents — to have sex with two of his friends, according to police. When she refused, investigators said the pair argued.
The woman, whom he allegedly had promised to marry, was found hanging from a tree the next morning.
Police are still looking for the two alleged accomplices.
“The incident occurred in Layyah district (in Punjab province) on Thursday night and was reported to the police on Friday when the local people saw a woman hanging from a tree,” senior police official Ghazi Salahudin told AFP.
He said the woman was raped and strangled to death, and then her body was hanged to make it look like a suicide.
“But the branch was so low and the dead body was touching the ground in sitting position,” he said.
The woman was the eldest of eight siblings and made a living by farming a small piece of land.
The incident has disturbing similarities to an attack in India last month, in which two teenage girls were found gang-raped and hanged from a mango tree in northern Uttar Pradesh state.
That attack sparked protests over police apathy, and was the latest to highlight India’s dismal record on preventing sexual violence. Similar headline-making cases since then have piled pressure on the authorities there.
Pakistani police said Saqib had met the woman after he visited her house in his role as an assistant at a vegetable wholesale shop. They allegedly had been in a relationship for about six months.
A day before the murder, police said, Saqib had brought the woman for a date in the shop where he worked. He took her to the roof, where two of his friends were waiting.
When Saqib tried to persuade the woman to have sex with all three of them, she resisted, according to police.
She was then allegedly raped and killed. Police said Saqib had confessed to the attack, adding that they were still investigating if the woman had been raped by the other men as well.
Though the issues of rape, sexual assault and domestic violence are not as high-profile in Pakistan as they have been in India in recent years, they are widespread in the deeply conservative country.
In March, a 17-year-old Pakistani victim of a gang-rape died after self-immolating in protest at a police decision to turn a key suspect free.
wh-ga/st/ac

2 Palestinians killed as Israel raids W.Bank

RAMALLAH, West Bank: Israeli troops killed two Palestinians on Sunday, Palestinian medics and a militant group said, as Israel pressed on with its crackdown on Hamas, the Islamist group it accuses of abducting three Israeli teens.
Soldiers entered several Palestinian cities and villages in the occupied West Bank, rounding up six suspected militants, the Israeli military said.
Israel has said its West Bank operation is twofold — to find Gil-Ad Shaer and US-Israeli national Naftali Fraenkel, both aged 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19, who went missing near an Israeli settlement on June 13, and to deal a substantial blow to Hamas.
Hamas, sworn to Israel’s destruction, has neither denied nor confirmed involvement in the disappearance of the youths.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in public remarks to his cabinet on Sunday, said Israel had conveyed its evidence against Hamas to several countries and would soon make it public. He defended Israel’s military action in the West Bank.
“We have no intention of hurting anyone maliciously, but our forces are behaving in the manner necessary for their self-defense and occasionally there are fatalities or wounded on the Palestinian side,” Netanyahu said.
The military has so far searched some 1,350 sites in the West Bank and detained more than 330 Palestinians. The raids have triggered street clashes in which four Palestinians have been killed.
During a raid in the city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers fired at stone-throwing Palestinians, killing Ahmad Famawi, 26, residents and medics said.
The military said its soldiers fired at a suspect who approached them without responding to calls to stop. The incident is being investigated, it said, though an “initial inquiry suggests the suspect was mentally unstable.”
In Ramallah, the Islamic Jihad militant group said one of its members was killed by Israeli gunfire. The Israeli military said it was “not familiar” with the incident.

Abbas challenges Netanyahu
The crisis has put pressure on a unity pact between Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and rival Hamas.
Abbas has condemned the abduction of the three Israelis, and his security forces have been helping in the search. But he has also called the Israeli sweeps collective punishment.
Abbas’s security cooperation with Israel touched off a rare protest against Palestinian police in Ramallah, the seat of his government, on Sunday.
Chanting “collaborators,” dozens of people hurled rocks at a police station and damaged three police cars when policemen remained inside the building rather than joining protesters in confronting Israeli troops who entered the city, witnesses said.
In an interview with Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, Abbas said he had no credible information Hamas was behind the kidnappings.
“I do not intend to punish anyone based off suspicions or because Netanyahu claims something. When Netanyahu has such information, he needs to update me and we will take care of the matter according to our own laws,” he said.

ATLANTA ( At Least 84 Could Have Been Exposed to Anthrax at U.S. Government Lab )

 

ATLANTA – The number of workers at U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who could have been exposed to anthrax has risen to 84, nine more than originally reported, the Atlanta-based federal agency said Friday.

“We have moved quickly to identify those who could have been exposed and they are being treated. Up to now, 84 have been identified as probably exposed,” CDC spokesperson Belsie Gonzalez told Efe.

Gonzalez said there were two other cases of possible contact that have not yet been confirmed.

The workers could have been infected due to the mismanagement of live biological material at one of the CDC laboratories.

The agency said it is observing closely the workers who might have been infected and has treated them to minimize the risk of complications.

While the incident is still under investigation, authorities say the employees would have been exposed to anthrax while handling samples of live material that had not been inactivated correctly.

The workers thought the samples were inactivated and did not use the equipment for personal protection required in such cases, the CDC said.

Authorities do not believe that people outside the agency are at any risk of anthrax infection.

Anthrax can infect the skin, lungs and digestive system of those who come in contact with the substance and is considered one of the most dangerous resources of biological terrorism.

The accidental exposure was discovered on June 13 when the original bacteria samples were collected to discard as trash and traces of live bacteria were detected that had been distributed among several CDC laboratories.

34 Iraqi soldiers slain on Syria border

RAMADI: Clashes with Sunni militants have killed 34 Iraqi security forces members in Al-Qaim, a town on the Syrian border, officials said Friday.
The fighting broke out late Thursday night and continued until around noon Friday, with militants in control of most of the town, security forces officers and a local official said. The identity of the militants was not immediately clear.
But the official, Farhan Farhan, appealed to the government for arms “stronger than the weapons that ISIL has,” a reference to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Witnesses said families had begun to flee Al-Qaim.