Friday, August 28, 2009 LONDON: Amnesty International said Thursday civilians were at a greater danger in Afghanistan than at any time since the Taliban extremists were ousted from power in 2001.The London-based human rights group cited Tuesday's bombing in Kandahar which killed 43 people and Thursday's clinic siege in the Sar Hawza district of Paktika province, which borders Pakistan and is a hotbed of Taliban violence. The Taliban-led insurgency hit record intensity in the build-up to and aftermath of the August presidential elections. "With the outcome of voting in Afghanistan unclear, the danger and insecurity facing millions of Afghans continues and in fact is higher now than ever," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty's Asia-Pacific director. "Anti-government groups, including the Taliban, have demonstrated a systematic contempt for the safety of civilians by targeting Afghans who want to establish their future through ballots, not bullets. "The Afghan government and its international supporters have done much to try to protect Afghans from this threat during the election period but they must also show that they will follow the rule of law themselves and will quickly investigate, and if necessary punish, any violation of the laws of war or human rights violations." In the clinic siege, a fierce gunfight backed by US helicopter fire paralysed the small district after Taliban rebels forced their way into a clinic seeking treatment for their leader, officials and NATO said. One US soldier and 12 Taliban were killed. Amnesty called on NATO to launch an immediate investigation into the incident to establish whether international humanitarian laws were broken. "If the Taliban used the clinic as a shelter to fire from, they've committed a serious violation," said Zarifi. "But if they were using the clinic for health care, NATO forces had no business firing on the clinic, even if they had cleared out civilians from the facility.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in
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