India pilot daughter accepts Pakistan pilot’s ‘remorse’

The daughter of a dead Indian pilot has thanked a Pakistani fighter pilot for apologising after shooting down the aircraft that her father was commanding more than four decades ago.Her father Jahangir Engineer was flying the plane which had apparently drifted off course along the border.

Qais Hussain, who was a Pakistani pilot during the 1965 war with India, shot down the eight-seater plane.Earlier, he wrote to Mrs Singh saying he was sorry for the loss of precious lives during the incident and was acting under orders from his superiors. The Pakistanis suspected the craft of being on a reconnaissance mission to open a new war front. Mr Hussain was ordered to shoot it down, despite pleas for mercy by Mr Engineer.

The former fighter pilot said that when he landed back at an air base at Karachi, he felt highly elated for having completed the mission.But the mood changed later that evening when All India Radio announced that the plane had been a civilian Indian aircraft with eight people on board.
In a letter to Farida Singh, Mr Hussain said that everyone connected with the incident felt sorry and dejected.

“The fact that this all happened in the confusion of a tragic war was never lost to us ”

Mrs Singh replied that she was “somewhat overwhelmed” at receiving the letter. She said the death of her father had “defined our lives”.
“But in all the struggles that followed, we never, not for one moment, bore bitterness or hatred for the person who actually pulled the trigger and caused my father s death,” she wrote.

“The fact that this all happened in the confusion of a tragic war was never lost to us. We are all pawns in this terrible game of war and peace.”
Describing her father as an “ace pilot, a great leader of men and a willing team player”, Mrs Singh said he was also generous of spirit.
“Hence it is now easy for me to reach out my hand to receive your message. This incident is indeed a prime example of what damage strife and mindless battles can drive even good men to do,” she said.

Mr Hussain said he decided to write to the family after all these years when an opportunity arose through his contacts in India, who put him in touch with the pilot s daughter.

“I feel sorry for you, your family and the other seven families who lost their dearest ones,” his letter stated.

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

Taliban attack on US chopper kills Afghan interpreter

KABUL: Taliban insurgents fired a rocket into a US helicopter on Tuesday, killing an Afghan interpreter and wounding eight soldiers in eastern Afghanistan, a key flashpoint in the country’s war.

The US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) took nearly a full day to confirm that an explosion on the aircraft was caused by an insurgent attack, which the Taliban militia had been quick to claim.

An AFP correspondent in Kunar province said he saw three helicopters flying over the Ghash area of Marawar district and then heard the sound of rocket fire, after which two helicopters flew off and a gun battle broke out.

“Eight people were wounded and one killed after a rocket-propelled-grenade was fired at an International Security Assistance Force helicopter in Kunar province today,” the military said.

There were 26 people on board the helicopter,

Cargo plane crashes near Kabul, seven dead

KABUL: A civilian cargo transport plane crashed into mountains near the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday evening, killing all seven people on board, a local civil aviation official said.

Afghan and international forces sent a search and rescue mission and helicopters out to the area of the crash, around 25-30 kilometres (15-20 miles) east of Kabul, after the aircraft went down en route from nearby Bagram military air base.

“It was a cargo plane coming from Bagram to Kabul when it hit the peak,” Nangyalai Qalatwal, spokesman for the Ministry of Civil Aviation, told Reuters.

He said all seven people on board had died and all were foreigners, but he had no details of their nationalities.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said early reports indicated the plane was an L-100 Hercules aircraft, the civilian equivalent of a military

New baby surprises UK’s Cameron on summer holiday

LONDON: Samantha Cameron, the wife of Britain’s prime minister, gave birth on Tuesday to the couple’s fourth child, a baby girl, while on a family holiday in the southwest of England.

David Cameron, who took office as prime minister in May, said the birth had come as “a bit of a shock” as the baby had not been expected until September but it had gone very well.

“We’re absolutely thrilled. She is an unbelievably beautiful girl and I’m a very proud Dad,” he told British television channels outside the hospital in the town of Truro, in the picturesque region of Cornwall.

“Both baby and Mum seem to be doing very well. So, really exciting and I’ve told the other two children who are thrilled, bouncing up and down and dying to say hello to the new baby.”

The couple went into hospital at about 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) and the baby girl was born by Caesarean section

China plane crashes, 42 dead, 49 in hospital

BEIJING: A passenger plane crashed in northeast China late on Tuesday, overshooting the runway andbursting into flames, killing at least 42 of 96 people onboard in what was the nation’s worst air disaster for years.

The Henan Airlines plane crashed at 10.10 pm (1410 GMT) in Yichun, a small city in Heilongjiang province, after flying from Harbin, the province’s capital, state media said.

Sun Bangnan, a deputy chief of the Heilonjiang police, said 42 corpses of people killed in the accident had already been found at the site where the plane split apart and burst into flames after overshooting the runway of the Yichun airport.

Yichun Vice Mayor Wang Xuemei told Chinese television news that 49 of the 96 people on board had been taken to hospital, and three were seriously injured. Chinese media reports say there were 91 passengers and five crew members on

Flood-hit areas of Punjab get tax relief

LAHORE: The Government of Punjab exempted the flood-stricken areas of province from agricultural tax.

This decision was made in a meeting chaired by PML-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif.
Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, ministers, chief secretary and high officials attended the meeting.

The Punjab government was directed to form committee so that relief goods could be dispatched to the flood-hit Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Later, Punjab government’s spokesman Pervaiz Rashid told media that Mian Nawaz Sharif will visit the calamity- hit areas soon.

Monsoon floods kill up to 800, affect 1m

PESHAWAR: Rescue workers and troops in northwest Pakistan struggled Saturday to reach thousands of people affected by the country”s worst floods in living memory, as the death toll rose to 800.

Hundreds of homes and vast swathes of farmland were destroyed in the northwest and Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK), with the main highway to China reportedly cut and communities isolated as monsoon rains caused flash floods and landslides.

The United Nations said almost a million people had been affected by the flooding, and at least 45 bridges destroyed around Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Television footage and photos shot from helicopters showed people clinging to the walls and roof tops of damaged houses as gushing waters rampaged through inundated villages.

Carrying their belongings and with children on their shoulders, some even walked barefoot through the water to seek safety.

“This is the worst ever flood in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the country”s history,” provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said.

“The death toll in floods and rain-related incidents has risen up to 800 across the province,” he said.

Another 150 people were missing in the northwestern province, where many impoverished families live in remote mountain villages.

More than one million people have been affected, the minister said, adding that more than 3,700 houses had been swept away by floods and that the number of homeless people was rising.

Peshawar and the districts of Swat and Shangla were cut off from the rest of country as roads and highways were submerged, he said.

Police said five people were drowned when their boat capsized near the northwestern town of Nowshehra on Saturday.

Hundreds of people were seen arriving in Peshawar, many of them without any belongings.

Muqaddir Khan, 25, who arrived with nine other family members, said in a suburb of Peshawar that he had lost everything in flood.

“I laboured hard in Saudi Arabia for three years and set up a small shop which was swept away by flood in minutes. I have lost everything,” Khan said.

Razia Bibi, 48, said she and her family spent the night awake as water kept rising.

“My house is now gone under water and I could escape with a few belongings,” Bibi said.

Authorities are using school buildings in Peshawar to shelter those affected by the floods.

The army said it had sent boats and helicopters to rescue stranded people and its engineers were trying to open roads and divert water from key routes.

The flooding capped a week of tragedy for Pakistan, after an airliner crashed into hills near Islamabad Wednesday, killing 152 people on board.

Pakistan”s weather bureau said an “unprecedented” 312 millimetres (12 inches) of rain had fallen in 36 hours in the northwest but predicted only scattered showers during coming days.

Provincial relief commissioner Shakil Qadir said the worst-hit area was Malakand, where 102 people died and 16,000 were marooned because bridges had collapsed and road links been cut.

Qadir said that around 2,800 holidaymakers were stranded in the Swat valley.

Efforts were being made to airlift the holidaymakers to safety in helicopters, he said.

The Karakoram Highway, which links Pakistan to China, was closed as rains washed away a bridge in Shangla district, also cutting off Gilgit-Baltistan from other parts of the country, media reports said.

Northwest Pakistan has been hardest hit but monsoon rains have also killed 25 people in the southwestern province of Balochistan over the past few days, a senior officer of the disaster management authority, Ataullah Khan, said.

Flash floods had affected eight districts, he said, adding that around 275,000 people had been affected and more than 15,000 houses destroyed.

UN boss extends condolences over deadly air crash

UNITED NATIONS: UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday sent his condolences to Pakistan”s prime minister over the deadly crash of a Pakistani airliner with 152 people on board.

“The Secretary General is deeply saddened by the tragic air crash today near Islamabad in which many people lost their lives,” a UN statement said.

It added that Ban wrote to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to express the sincere sympathy of the world body.

A Pakistani airliner carrying 152 people crashed in a ball of flames earlier Wednesday into densely wooded hills outside Islamabad amid heavy rain and poor visibility, killing everyone on board.

“Nobody survived,” Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik told Geo TV.

Two Baghdad car bombs kill 26, wound 53

BAGHDAD: Twin car bombs in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Sunday killed 26 people and wounded 53, many of them women or traffic police, the interior ministry said.

The bombs exploded within minutes of each other at around 11:30 am (0830 GMT) in the Al-Yarmuk neighbourhood of west Baghdad, a security official said.

The vehicles were parked close to government offices where identity cards and passports are issued, and large queues of people had formed to seek renewals.

Traffic police offices and a branch of the Iraqi Commercial Bank also lie nearby in the same square which was thronged with people on the first day of the working week. “The bank branch was seriously damaged,” the security official said.

The bombings came hot on the heels of a string of attacks in the capital on Saturday evening.

Three roadside bombs planted in Hurriya, a Shiite neighbourhood in the north of Baghdad, killed four people and wounded 16, a security official told a foreign news agency.

Fire from a Katyusha multiple rocket launcher killed three people and wounded four in Al-Obeidi, an anarchic Shiite slum district in the far east of the capital beyond the sprawling Shiite bastion of Sadr City, an official said.

And in the Zayouna neighbourhood of central Baghdad, police found the bodies of five women. A security official said they were believed to have been killed two or three weeks ago.

There has been a spate of attacks recently by hardline Islamists against women accused of breaking the mores of their ultra-strict brand of the Muslim religion.

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