PAF pilot killed in crash

 

A pilot was killed when his Pakistan Air Force plane crashed Wednesday during a training mission in southwestern Baluchistan province, an air force spokesman said.

 

“It was a Chinese-made F-7PG training aircraft,” Air Commodore Anis Mirza told AFP.

 

The plane crashed in Pishin district, 65 kilometres (40 miles) north of the provincial capital Quetta, during a “routine” training mission, he said, adding that the pilot “embraced martyrdom”.

 

The cause of the crash was not immediately known, he said. An investigation is under way.

 

It was the fourth air force jet to crash in training in over three months. Two pilots were killed in the other incidents and a helicopter crash last June killed four military personnel.

 

The Pakistan Air Force has a fleet of Chinese aircraft including F-7PGs and A-5s, plus US-built F-16s and French Mirages. It recently acquired medium-tech JF-17, or Thunder jets, manufactured jointly by China and Pakistan.
 

Iran calls for one-state Palestinian solution

He said the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations is doomed to fail.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the Palestinians should not limit themselves to seeking a country based on the pre-1967 borders which would implicitly recognize Israel because “all land belongs to Palestinians.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has asked the U.N. Security Council to recognize an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.

Khamenei, who spoke at a pro-Palestinian conference in Tehran, once again called Israel a “cancerous tumor” that should be removed.

Iran supports the militant Palestinian Hamas group, which rules Gaza and which does not back the statehood bid pushed by Abbas and his Western-backed Fatah.

“Our claim is freedom of Palestine, not part of Palestine. Any plan that partitions Palestine is totally rejected,” Khamenei told the gathering. “Palestine spans from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean), nothing less.”

Khamenei claimed that a two state solution would mean “giving in to the demand of the Zionists” and that it would “trample the rights of the Palestinian people” to live on their land.

Taliban gunned down US drone

Taliban spokesman Zabihollah Mojahed claimed that the militants gunned down the aircraft late on Saturday. Reports quoted witnesses as saying that they saw the drone catching fire mid-air and crashing into a civilian house. Earlier this week, another US drone crashed due to technical problems in eastern Ghazni Province, NATO said in a statement. But Taliban claimed the first crash as well.

The Taliban militants say they have shot down several aircraft and NATO choppers in different parts of Afghanistan over the past few months. Taliban have stepped up their attacks on US-led forces in the recent months.

Rebels eye Gaddafi’s hometown

TRIPOLI: Opposition says it controls strategic town of Zawiyah; regime appoints new UN envoy; at least 60 dead in 2 days; rebels down fighter plane.

Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi waged a second offensive against the western town of Zawiyah on Saturday after rebels drove them out in a morning of fierce fighting; while to the east, opponents of the Libyan strongman pushed toward his hometown.

In a second day of fierce fighting for control of Zawiyah, 50 km. west of Tripoli, government forces retreated to the outskirts early in the day, but later mounted a counter-offensive.

Rebels said both attacks were repelled.

The city bore the signs of heavy fighting, with one building completely burned and smoldering rubble littering the center. Other buildings around the main square, the stronghold of rebel resistance, were riddled with holes from large-caliber weapons.

Rebels in eastern Libya said they were pushing further west after driving forces loyal to Gaddafi from the oil town of Ras Lanuf on Friday. Opposition fighters said they had taken the town of Bin Jawad some 525 km. east of Tripoli, and were moving on toward Sirte, Gaddafi’s heavily guarded hometown 160 km. away.

The fight over Sirte is likely to be fierce. The town is psychologically important. It is not only where Gaddafi was born but a place he has fashioned into a second capital designed in his own extravagant image.

“If Benghazi rebels can expand down into the Gulf of Sirte… they’ve got a very good shot at independence at the least – or maybe even overturning him at the most,” said Peter Zeihan, an analyst with the US-based Stratfor think tank.

The latest fighting suggested that front lines between government forces, including militia and mercenaries, and the rebels, who are fighting with everything from captured tanks to sticks and winning support from some police and soldiers along theway, were far from clear and could shift quickly.

Rebels seized Ras Lanuf on Friday and even managed to down a fighter aircraft in Gaddafi’s service. The BBC reported the plane had been shot down by a man in his 50s who was on his first day manning a mobile anti-aircraft gun, which only had one barrel working.

Reuters correspondent Mohammed Abbas wrote in a brief message from the scene: “I am at the wreckage of the aircraft in Ras Lanuf.” In a sign of the increasing reports of brutality of both sides of this conflict, he said the faces of the corpses appeared to have been ripped off.

The anti-Gaddafi National Libyan Council said on Saturday it had named a three-member crisis committee, which included a head of military affairs and one for foreign affairs.

Omar Hariri, one of the officers who took part in Gaddafi’s 1969 coup but was later jailed, was appointed head of the military.

Ali Essawi, a former ambassador to India who quit last month, was put in charge of foreign affairs. Mahmoud Jebril, who had been involved in a project among intellectuals to establish a democratic state, was named head of the crisis committee, which aims at streamlining decision-making.

Meanwhile, Libya has appointed former foreign minister Ali Abdussalam Treki as its UN envoy in New York, replacing an ambassador who had renounced the Gaddafi regime for inflicting violence on its own people, the UN said on Friday.

“The secretary-general has received correspondence from the Libyan authorities,” UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

“That correspondence names Dr. Treki as the person they wish to have as the permanent representative of their country.”

It is not clear whether Treki, one of Gaddafi’s most senior foreign policy advisers and a former president of the UN General Assembly, will ever take up the post as ambassador to the United Nations.

In theory, Gaddafi has the right to name his UN envoys.

“Libya is a recognized member of the United Nations,” Nesirky said. “When any country sends a letter naming the permanent representative, that person is the person who will be recognized as the permanent representative.”

Nesirky added, however, that Treki would need to present his credentials to Ban in New York to become the Libyan ambassador.

The United States has a treaty with the United Nations covering visa issuance, but Washington reserves the right to deny visas under certain circumstances.

It is unclear whether the US State Department would be prepared to give Treki a visa.

Economic pressure against Libya also continued to mount this weekend. Britain extended a freeze on assets to a further 20 members of Gaddafi’s entourage on Friday, and impounded around £100 million ($160m.) of Libyan currency.

Around £2 billion of assets belonging to Libyan interests are believed to have been frozen in Britain under sanctions against Gaddafi’s government after its violent crackdown on protests.

The asset freeze was imposed last week and initially applied only to Gaddafi and his immediate family. It now extends to 26 people.

“The financial net is closing in on Colonel Gaddafi,” Chancellor of the Exchequer trendpk.comrge Osborne told BBC television.

“We’re denying him access to banknotes, access to bank accounts, making sure he is held accountable for what is taking place in Libya and also denied the means to persecute his own people.” (Online)

Switzerland also banned transfers of money that could end up in the hands of his family and associates.

“Switzerland wants to prevent any financial support of Muammar Gaddafi and his circle,” the government said. It will also be forbidden to give people linked to Gaddafi direct or indirect access to money or economic resources, the government said.

On the ground in Zawiyah, the atmosphere was tense and the situation appeared fluid as rebels braced for more attacks.

A doctor in the city said at least 30 people, mostly civilians, had been killed during fighting there, bringing to at least 60 the death toll from two days of battles.

In the central square, four graves had been freshly dug.

The red, green and black flag of the rebellion flew from many buildings in the square, where rebels shouted anti-Gaddafi slogans atop tanks and armored personnel carriers captured from the army.

In the square, rebels showed a charred tank they had captured from government forces earlier in the day. It was hit by a rebel rocket-propelled grenade as Gaddafi forces tried to enter the square earlier, rebels said.

“The fighting has intensified and the tanks are shelling everything on their way. They have shelled houses,” resident Abu Akeel said by telephone, speaking of afternoon’s attack. “Now they are shelling a mosque where hundreds of people are hiding. We can’t rescue anyone because the shelling is so heavy.”

Outside the city, cars loaded with suitcases and boxes piled on their roofs could be seen driving westward toward Libya’s border with Tunisia as refugees continued to flee the violence.

Residents said it was difficult to say how many people had been killed in two days of fighting.

A government spokesman could not be reached for a comment.

“They took away many bodies of injured and killed civilians,” said a local civilian who was helping treat the wounded at a clinic. “I saw that. They were putting them in trucks.”

Residents said Gaddafi’s forces stormed into residential buildings and killed people inside their houses in order to secure sniper positions on rooftops.

“They slaughtered people,” another resident said. “But we tell Gaddafi that every time a martyr falls, there will be 10 to replace him.”

The noise of loudspeakers calling on rebels to keep on fighting could be heard through the telephone.

Rebels fighting Gaddafi’s four-decade rule in Zawiyah said they had captured two tanks and three armored personnel carriers from the army.

Inside a building that has served as the rebel central command in the town, the rebels presented six men they said were captured Gaddafi militia fighters.

Two of them were badly wounded, with one standing in a pool of his own blood, which was dripping from his thigh.

Appearing terrified, they waited silently as the rebels looked through their identification papers.

US missile ‘kills up to seven in Pakistan’s Khyber’

PESHAWAR: A US missile strike killed seven militants in Pakistan’s tribal district of Khyber on Thursday, local security officials said, in an apparent expansion of America’s covert drone campaign.

The United States does not as a rule confirm drone attacks, but its military and the Central Intelligence Agency operating in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy the aircraft in the region.

Washington considers Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda and says eliminating the militant threat is vital to winning the nine-year war against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials said a US drone fired a missile that destroyed a vehicle carrying up to seven militants in the Spin Darang area of the Tirah valley in Khyber, which borders Afghanistan.

“It was a drone attack. Seven militants travelling in the vehicle were killed in the attack,” a security official in Peshawar told AFP.

Another security official said all the dead were local Taliban militants.

They were thought to be from Waziristan, Pakistan’s most notorious Al-Qaeda and Taliban hub on the Afghan border, and the northwestern district of Swat, where Pakistan launched a major operation last year to clear out the Taliban.

Pakistani security officials were divided over whether it was the first or second US drone strike in Khyber, close to the teeming northwestern city of Peshawar.

Local media reported a US drone strike in Khyber in May, although Pakistani officials at the time were reluctant to confirm the attack.

A new US policy review on Thursday concluded that President Barack Obama’s troop surge has made progress in curbing the Taliban in Afghanistan and severely weakening Al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

The report says that after a relentless US campaign, Al-Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan is weaker than at any stage since the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks.

Progress will permit a “responsible reduction” of US forces in Afghanistan, currently nearly 100,000-strong, to begin next July, though a full handover to Afghan security is not envisaged until at least 2014, the review said.

The report also said that the US anti-terror alliance with Pakistan had been “substantial” but “uneven” in the last year, since Obama vowed to forge a new relationship of mutual trust and respect with Islamabad.

On Thursday, Britain said it was looking into media reports that two British men, possibly Muslim converts, were killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region last week.

“Our High Commission in Pakistan is seeking further information on these reports,” a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

Channel Four News and The Guardian newspaper claimed that the Britons died in a strike near the town of Datta Khel on December 10.

The men were aged 48 and 25 and reportedly had English names but used the pseudonyms Abu Bakr and Mansoor Ahmed.

If confirmed, the men would be the first white British converts to have been killed in the area, The Guardian said. AGENCIES

Pakistan to arm fighter jets with Chinese missiles

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has confirmed it will buy Chinese missiles and flight systems to equip its 250 JF-17 Thunder jet fighters as it seeks to deepen military cooperation with Beijing, state media said Thursday.

Rao Qamar Suleman, air chief marshal of the Pakistan Air Force, told the Global Times newspaper Chinese radar systems and SD-10 mid-range homing missiles would be used on the fighters co-developed by the two nations.

“PAF has no plans to install Western devices and weapons on the aircraft for the time being,” the newspaper quoted Suleman as saying.

Pakistan may also buy up to four Chinese surface-to-air missiles, as it seeks stronger cooperation with China to help upgrade its armed forces, Suleman told the China Daily in a separate interview.

He made the remarks on the sidelines of the annual Zhuhai Air Show now under way in southern

Cuba says all 68 on board died in plane crash

HAVANA: All 68 people on board an Aero Caribbean plane were killed when it crashed in mountainous central Cuba on Thursday after issuing an emergency call, a government website said on Friday.

“There were no survivors in the plane,” www.cubadebate.cu said. “Its 68 passengers, including seven crew members, died when the aircraft crashed.”

The website published a list of the 40 Cubans and 28 foreigners from 10 countries who were on board.

It posted a photograph showing flames rising from the shattered remains of the plane — an ATR-72-212 twin turboprop built by ATR, a joint venture of Europe’s EADS and Italian group Finmeccanica.

Aero Caribbean is a state-owned regional airline. According to www.planespotters.net, the plane that crashed was one of the youngest in its fleet, at 15 years old.

Witnesses said the plane made “several brusque

Yemen: Woman and her mother who sent parcel bomb arrested

Britain has said that parcel bombs sent from Yemen to US could have exploded anytime; where as the woman and her mother involved in sending the parcel bomb have been arrested in Yemen.
Two packages containing explosives were intercepted on Friday, one hidden in a printer at a FedEx facility in Dubai, the other on a UPS cargo plane at a UK airport. British Home Secretary Theresa May said that bomb packed enough explosive to bring down the aircraft and the device was viable and could have exploded. The target may have been an aircraft, and had it detonated, the aircraft could have been brought down. The packages were addressed to synagogues in Chicago. British Prime Minister David Cameron said as an internationally coordinated investigation continues, no packages from Yemen will be allowed to cross his country’s borders. We have immediately banned packages coming to or through Britain from the Yemen and we will be looking extremely carefully at any further steps we have to take. In the end, these terrorists think that our connectedness, our openness as modern countries is what makes us weak, they are wrong, it is a source of our strength, and we will use that strength, that determination, that power, that solidarity, to defeat them, he added. The US Department of Homeland Security said the bombs bear the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda or its affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the failed attempt to blow up a US plane on Christmas Day, 2009.

Yemen: Woman and her mother who sent parcel bomb arrested

Britain has said that parcel bombs sent from Yemen to US could have exploded anytime; where as the woman and her mother involved in sending the parcel bomb have been arrested in Yemen.
Two packages containing explosives were intercepted on Friday, one hidden in a printer at a FedEx facility in Dubai, the other on a UPS cargo plane at a UK airport. British Home Secretary Theresa May said that bomb packed enough explosive to bring down the aircraft and the device was viable and could have exploded. The target may have been an aircraft, and had it detonated, the aircraft could have been brought down. The packages were addressed to synagogues in Chicago. British Prime Minister David Cameron said as an internationally coordinated investigation continues, no packages from Yemen will be allowed to cross his country’s borders. We have immediately banned packages coming to or through Britain from the Yemen and we will be looking extremely carefully at any further steps we have to take. In the end, these terrorists think that our connectedness, our openness as modern countries is what makes us weak, they are wrong, it is a source of our strength, and we will use that strength, that determination, that power, that solidarity, to defeat them, he added. The US Department of Homeland Security said the bombs bear the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda or its affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the failed attempt to blow up a US plane on Christmas Day, 2009.

Yemen: Woman and her mother who sent parcel bomb arrested

Britain has said that parcel bombs sent from Yemen to US could have exploded anytime; where as the woman and her mother involved in sending the parcel bomb have been arrested in Yemen.
Two packages containing explosives were intercepted on Friday, one hidden in a printer at a FedEx facility in Dubai, the other on a UPS cargo plane at a UK airport. British Home Secretary Theresa May said that bomb packed enough explosive to bring down the aircraft and the device was viable and could have exploded. The target may have been an aircraft, and had it detonated, the aircraft could have been brought down. The packages were addressed to synagogues in Chicago. British Prime Minister David Cameron said as an internationally coordinated investigation continues, no packages from Yemen will be allowed to cross his country’s borders. We have immediately banned packages coming to or through Britain from the Yemen and we will be looking extremely carefully at any further steps we have to take. In the end, these terrorists think that our connectedness, our openness as modern countries is what makes us weak, they are wrong, it is a source of our strength, and we will use that strength, that determination, that power, that solidarity, to defeat them, he added. The US Department of Homeland Security said the bombs bear the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda or its affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the failed attempt to blow up a US plane on Christmas Day, 2009.

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