10 WORLD
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 29 2014
Jihadists vow reprisals for air strikes Police to charge beheading accused
DAMASCUS: The al-Nusra
Front, al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, has threatened reprisals
against nations participating in
air strikes against the Islamic
State, denouncing them as “a
war against Islam”.
Group spokesman Abu
Firas al-Suri said in a video
posted online that the states
involved had “committed a
horrible act that is going to put
them on the list of jihadist
targets throughout the world.”
The warning came as the
US-led coalition widened its
air strikes against the IS group
in Syria and as British warplanes flew their first antijihadist combat missions over
neighbouring Iraq.
Washington has been supported in its Syria campaign by
Arab allies Bahrain, Jordan,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates.
Seven targets were hit in
Syria, the Pentagon said.
These included the border
crossing into Turkey of the
besieged Kurdish town of Ain
al-Arab, also known as
Kobane.
Muhsin al-Fadhli, a longstanding al-Qaeda operative
and alleged leader of Khorasan, was killed in the strikes, according to a jihadist who
fought with the group.
OKLAHOMA CITY: Police say
a man who was shot after allegedly beheading a woman at an
Oklahoma food processing
plant, from which he had just
been fired, has regained consciousness and will be charged
with first-degree murder.
Police Sergeant Jeremy
Lewis said on Saturday that
30-year-old Alton Nolen remains hospitalised in a stable
condition. He said Nolen had
regained consciousness and investigators had interviewed
him.
Sgt Lewis said Nolen would
be charged today with first-degree murder and assault and
battery with a deadly weapon
and he could also face federal
charges.
Authorities said Nolen severed the head of 54-year-old
Colleen Hufford during Thursday’s attack at the Vaughn
Japanese
volcano
rains ash
and death
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
TOKYO: Rescue workers
have found 30 or more people
unconscious and believed to be
dead near the peak of an erupting volcano in central Japan,
local government and police
said.
Nagano prefecture posted
on its website that about 30
people had heart and lung failure, the customary way for
Japanese authorities to describe a body until police doctors can examine it. At least
four of the victims were being
brought down yesterday.
A Nagano police official
described the number as more
than 30. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he
wasn’t authorised to speak
publicly.
Mount Ontake in central
Japan erupted shortly before
noon on Saturday, spewing
large white plumes of gas and
ash high into the sky and
blanketing the surrounding
area in ash. The mountain is a
popular climbing destination,
and at least 250 people were
initially trapped on the slopes,
though most made their way
down by Saturday night.
Before the unconscious victims were found, Japan’s Fire
and Disaster Management
Agency said that 45 people had
been reported missing. The
exact location of the bodies
and their identities were not
immediately known.
Keita Ushimaru, an official
in nearby Kiso town, said that
Nagano crisis management
officials had informed the
town that at least four people
with heart and lung failure
were being brought down to
the town, and that there were
others in the same condition.
The journey was expected to
take about three hours.
Rescue workers were also
trying to help injured people
and others who had been
stranded on the mountain
overnight, many taking refuge
in mountain lodges.
Military
helicopters
plucked seven people off the
mountainside earlier yesterday, and workers were helping
others make their way down
the slopes. Seven people were
picked up in three helicopter
trips, said Defence Ministry official Toshihiko Muraki. All
are conscious and can walk,
though details of their conditions were unclear, he said.
Japanese television footage
showed a soldier descending
from a helicopter to an ashcovered slope, helping latch on
a man and then the two of
them being pulled up.
The Self-Defence Force, as
Japan’s military is called, has
deployed seven helicopters
and 250 troops. Police and fire
departments are also taking
part in the rescue effort.
A large plume, a mixture of
white and grey, continued to
rise from the ash-covered summit of 3067m Mount Ontake
yesterday.
The last major eruption of
Mount Ontake, which sits
about 210km west of Tokyo,
was in 1979.
Foods plant in Moore, near
Oklahoma City.
They said Nolen was repeatedly stabbing another
woman when Vaughan Food
executive Mark Vaughan shot
him. That woman survived.
Nolen appeared to have
chosen his victims at random,
police said of Thursday’s grisly
incident, and there was no immediate indication of a link
with terrorism.
Shortage
of beds,
doctors in
Ebola fight
Firefighters and members of the Japan Self-Defence Forces prepare to rescue climbers near the peak
of the ash-covered Mount Ontake
Picture: AP Photo/Kyodo News
MONROVIA: Doctors are in
short supply. So are beds for
patients.
Six months into the world’s
worst-ever Ebola outbreak,
and the first to happen in an
unprepared West Africa, the
gap between what has been
sent by other countries and
private groups and what is
needed is huge.
Even as countries try to
marshal more resources, those
needs threaten to become
much greater, and possibly
even insurmountable.
Fourteen-year-old DJ Mulbah was taken by his mother
and grandmother on Saturday
in desperate pursuit of a coveted bed at the Ebola clinic run
by Doctors Without Borders in
Monrovia, Liberia’s capital.
Too weak to stand, he was put
into a taxi with his backpack
and a bucket for vomit. Now he
lay on the dirt beside the worried women.
“He’s been sick for a week
with a runny stomach,” said his
mother.
By 8am a dozen people who
likely have Ebola are crouching and sitting on the ground
outside the padlocked metal
gates of a facility with a
capacity of 160 patients. Soon a
triage nurse approaches, her
voice muffled through a surgical mask covered by a plastic
face shield. The clinic will take
the boy. DJ manages a faint
smile. Seven of the 30 beds
made
available
Saturday
morning were vacated by survivors. The rest had died.
Statistics reviewed by The
Associated Press and interviews with experts and those
on the scene of one of the
worst health disasters in modern history show how great the
needs are and how little the
world has done in response.
The existing bed capacity
for Ebola patients in Liberia,
Sierra Leone and Guinea and
Nigeria is about 820, well short
of the 2900 beds that are currently needed, according to the
World Health Organisation.
Primary school deaths spark protest Cops move on sit-in for democracy
YUNNAN: Chinese parents
staged a protest yesterday after
six pupils were killed in a stampede at a primary school on
Friday.
Pictures show riot police
confronting dozens of parents,
many of them wailing with
grief, near Mingtong Primary
School in Kunming, capital of
the southwestern province of
Yunnan.
Officials said the children
killed were in grades one and
two, meaning they were likely
six or seven-years-old. State
news agency Xinhua said the
accident happened when a 2m-
long cotton cushion used for
gym class, which had been
propped against a wall, toppled
over and blocked a stairway
corridor. Several children were
apparently trapped underneath and their schoolmates,
streaming past, stepped on
them without realising.
HONG KONG: Hundreds of
Hong Kong pro-democracy
protesters were locked in a
tense standoff with police who
warned yesterday they would
crack down on a mass sit-in
outside government headquarters to demand Beijing
grant genuine democratic re-
forms for the former British
colony.
Students and activists have
been camped out on the streets
outside the government complex all weekend. Students
started the rally but by early
yesterday leaders of the broader Occupy Central civil move-
ment said they were joining to
kickstart a long-threatened
mass sit-in.
The protesters reject Beijing’s recent decision to restrict
voting reforms for the firstever elections to choose the
city’s leader in 2017. Police
have arrested 78 people.
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