Charles Clarke

BRUSSELS, Belgium, July 13--British police believe the bombers behind last week’s London attacks could be part of a broader network, British Home Secretary Charles Clarke said on Wednesday.
“A central hypothesis that has to be tested and investigated, is that the individuals we know about were working within a wider community,“ he told reporters in Brussels, AFP reported.
“The police work ... is obviously focusing on trying to answer for themselves the question,“ he said.
At least 52 people were killed and some 700 injured in the coordinated bombing attacks during the Thursday morning rush hour on London’s underground train network and a double-decker bus.
Police believe they have identified four suspects who all lived in Britain and were killed in the blasts.
In an exclusive interview earlier with the BBC, Clarke said that Britain has to face the possibility that more people are prepared to carry out suicide bombings like those last week.
“I certainly think we have to organize ourselves on the basis there are other people prepared to act in this way,“ he told BBC Radio.
He said police must tackle the roots of the problem by dealing with “anybody who preaches the kind of fundamentalism ... which can lead four young men to blow themselves and others up on the tube on a Thursday morning.“
When asked by reporters how he reacted to the news of the bombings and the fact that the bombers may be Muslims who were living in Britain, Clarke said: “I was surprised, I was shocked.“
He said he was hopeful that the Muslim community would not be targeted in response.
“I am actually very confident there won’t be a backlash,“ he said.
“The faith communities in Britain have been very, very strong,“ he said, adding that the leadership of the Muslim community, by “saying ’we totally deplore this type of terrorist act’, has been very strong.“
Clarke said the problem was not interfaith relationships.
“They are good and strong. It’s a question of standing up and asserting as strongly as is necessary that we just can’t assume that we’re all okay in our democratic multicultural society,“ he told the BBC.
“We’ve got to root out those elements from within our community that want to destroy it,“ he said.

Pakistani men search for survivors after a train crash near Ghotki, 430 km (270 miles) northeast of Karachi, July 13. (Reuters Photo)

GHOTKI, Pakistan, July 13--The first thing many passengers heard was a huge bang that shocked them out of their sleep. And what they saw was right out of a nightmare.
“We saw several coaches skidded off the track and there were bodies lying scattered across the railway yard,“ said Mohammad Ahmed at the scene of Pakistan’s rail disaster Wednesday, which left up to 150 people dead, AFP reported.
“As the people in our train were screaming and shouting, there was another deafening explosion,“ Ahmed said. “The situation was so tragic that one cannot explain.“
Day dawned on a panorama of twisted green, red and white striped train carriages lying on top of each other at impossible angles, or crushed together like rusted tin cans.
What had happened was a grisly pile-up unprecedented even on Pakistan’s ageing rail network.
At 4:00 am (2300 GMT) on Wednesday, Ahmed was one of hundreds of people crammed into the rickety Quetta Express as it underwent repairs at tiny Sarhad station, some seven kilometers (four miles) from the remote town of Ghotki.
An express traveling from Lahore to Karachi at 120 kilometers (75 miles) an hour rear-ended the Quetta train, derailing a number of carriages onto another track, where a third locomotive ploughed into the wreckage.
Hours after the smash-up, the backs of two trains remained on the tracks--and in between lay a tangle of ripped metal, train wheels and shattered glass, dotted with pieces of luggage and body parts.
Villagers were the first at the scene, bringing food, tea, water and cold drinks for the victims, followed by soldiers and rescue workers who scrambled over the carnage, looking for survivors.
Passengers sought frantically for their loved ones, and the sounds of the rescue effort were punctuated by wailing and cries.
The scene was also chaotic at local hospitals, where some of the injured had to be treated on the lawns outside.
Ghotki hospital said it had so far received 113 bodies and the number of injured there was 78. At least 24 were listed in serious condition. The hospital would update its list as the casualties continued to pour in.

TOKYO, July 13--A Japanese city on Wednesday adopted for use in its schools a history textbook critics say whitewashes Tokyo’s militaristic past, a decision likely to further chill ties with China and South Korea.
The education board of the city of Otawara in Tochigi Prefecture, 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Tokyo, became the first municipal government to adopt “The New History Textbook,“ written by nationalistic scholars for junior high schools, Reuters reported.
Japan’s Education Ministry approved the textbook in April, sparking anti-Japanese protests in China and fraying ties with South Korea. Resentment of Japan’s past military aggression runs deep in both countries, 60 years after the end of World War Two.
Critics say the textbook, sponsored by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Tsukurukai), plays down the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China, ignores the sexual enslavement of women for Japanese soldiers and depicts Japanese wartime actions as aimed at liberating other Asian countries.
“We protest the decision as it has a large impact on children’s view of history and it would lead to isolation from the rest of Asia,“ Hisao Ishiyama, head of a group of academics and teachers opposed to the textbook, said following Otawara’s move.
In addition, the city adopted a civics textbook, also sponsored by Tsukurukai, that has upset South Korea as it reiterates Tokyo’s claim to two tiny islands disputed with Seoul.
The authors and their supporters argue that the history text’s approach corrects a “masochistic“ view of history which they say has deprived Japanese of pride and patriotism.
The Japanese government has said the text does not represent its official view of history.
Japanese school textbooks are approved every four years by the Education Ministry following a screening process, and local school boards then decide during the summer which textbooks to adopt in their districts.
A previous version of the history textbook, approved in 2001, was adopted by less than 1 percent of school districts, but Tsukurukai and their supporters are hoping to increase the share to 10 percent this time.
Opponents of the textbook were worried while supporters were optimistic that given the rise of what they both see as nationalism in some quarters of Japanese society, many public schools may adopt the textbook.
While school boards pick the textbooks, board members are appointed by governors or mayors, which critics say leaves room for the views of the politicians to be reflected in the selection process.

CANBERRA, Australia, July 13--Australia will send 150 special forces and support troops back to Afghanistan to help its close ally the United States hunt down a resurgent Taliban and al Qaeda, Prime Minister John Howard said on Wednesday.
Howard said Australia would also consider sending up to 200 extra personnel to Afghanistan early next year to help with the nation’s reconstruction and as part of Australia’s increased efforts to support the war on terror, Reuters reported.
“We think it is important that the progress made in Afghanistan is preserved and consolidated and that the resurgence of violence and the resurgence of attempts by the Taliban to undermine the government of that country are not successful,“ Howard told reporters.
Howard said his conservative government would not alter Australia’s military presence in the Middle East and Iraq, where up to 1,370 Australians are deployed, despite reports that Britain wants Australia to take over command for southern Iraq.
“I believe that the current military commitment Australia has in Iraq is appropriate,“ Howard said, adding that Australia had not received any requests to take command in the south.
Australia sent 1,550 troops to Afghanistan in 2001, including special forces, to join the US-led strikes that toppled the ruling Taliban for harboring Islamic militant network al Qaeda, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, US airliner attacks.
Australia’s Special Air Service (SAS) troops were involved in some of the earliest and fiercest fighting in Afghanistan in 2001 and will again hunt for Taliban and al Qaeda, under an Australian commander but under wider operational control of US forces.
Australia’s original deployment to Afghanistan was withdrawn by the end of 2002 with only one fatalityÑSAS sergeant Andrew Russell, who was killed when his vehicle hit a landmine in February 2002.
Australia currently has only one mine clearer in Afghanistan.

HELSINKI, Finland, July 13--Aceh separatists on Wednesday said “amazingly surprising“ advances had been made so far in peace talks with Indonesian officials amid hopes that the two sides will finally agree to end a 30-year conflict that has claimed nearly 15,000 lives.
As a second day of negotiations got under way on Wednesday, delegates said they were pleased that they had already managed to cover all the points in a draft peace treaty, saying they were now prepared to discuss all the suggested changes.
“It’s amazingly surprising that we managed to discuss all the issues already yesterday (Tuesday),“ Free Aceh Movement (GAM) spokesman Bakhtiar Abdullah told AFP.
“Now we can discuss the new draft today,“ he added.
Maria-Elena Cowell, a spokeswoman for the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI) foundation organizing the talks, confirmed that “a few points have been reformulated“ in the draft treaty, but would not say which ones.
The western Indonesian province of Aceh has been a battleground for government and armed rebels since GAM launched its campaign for independence in 1976.
When the parties convened for a first round of Helsinki talks in January it was the first time they had met since May 2003, when Jakarta declared martial law and launched a major military offensive in the province.
The renewed efforts to make peace were prompted by a need for international aid to reach Aceh, which bore the brunt of last December’s tsunami. More than 131,000 people in the province perished.
While the four previous rounds of talks held in the Finnish capital have led to few concrete advances towards ending the conflict, recent statements from both the Indonesian government and the Aceh separatists have given rise to optimism that a genuine settlement can be reached.
Most significantly perhaps, GAM has said it is willing to give in to Jakarta’s demand that Aceh remain a part of Indonesia, a main sticking point in the talks.
Although Jakarta, too, appears to be softening on several issues, including on whether Indonesian military forces will withdraw from the province, GAM insists that the government needs to do more to ensure an agreement.
The EU is considering sending a monitoring team to Aceh if a deal is agreed upon.
The discussions, which are scheduled to last through Sunday, are being held at the Koeningstedt estate outside Helsinki and are being mediated by former Finnish president and career diplomat Martti Ahtisaari.

TURBI, Kenya,
July 13--Sixty six people, at least 22 of them children, were killed in a brutal raid on this remote village in northeastern Kenya in what is believed to be the country’s worst-ever single episode of inter-clan violence, a local legislator said Thursday.
Bonaya Godana, the member of parliament for North Horr district in which the attack took place, told AFP that 56 villagers, most of them young children and their mothers, had been killed in Tuesday’s raid on Turbi village.
Police said 10 of the attackers had also died in the early morning raid which terrified residents said was an attack by the Borana clan on the rival Gabra clan spurred by long-running disputes over water and pasture.
Godana, a former Kenyan foreign minister who was touring the scene of the attack, told AFP that many of the victims had been shot dead while getting ready to go to school in the village about 580 kilometers (360 miles) northeast of Nairobi.
“The situation is very sad on the ground, everybody is mourning the dead,“ Godana said. “As of this morning, 56 of our people have been confirmed dead and of them are 22 schoolchildren, and most of them died in their school uniforms.“
He added that 10 schoolchildren were among the seriously wounded.
“The majority of the dead are mothers and their children,“ Godana said. “Three other people are still missing and we suspect that they are dead.“
Police said earlier Wednesday that they had been able to confirm the deaths of only 45 villagers, mostly women and children, and 10 attackers, but Godana and residents of the area said the toll was higher with hundreds wounded by gunshots.
Dead bloodied bodies and bullet casings littered the ground around traditional hut compounds known as manyatta, a trading centre and nearby primary school. Survivors said that the attackers were armed with AK-47 assault rifles, grenades, bows and arrows and machetes.
They said the attack began when between 200 and 500 Borana raiders overpowered security guards in Turbi, which is populated mainly by the Gabra, and opened fire on two manyattas and a primary school.
Officials said a combined Kenyan police and military team, backed by three helicopters, was pursuing the surviving raiders near the Kenya-Ethiopia border.