United Nations (CNN) -- The United Nations Security Council strongly condemned the Somalia suicide bombing that took the lives of at least 33 people on Tuesday. Six members of the Somali Parliament died in the attack and three members were injured, a government spokesperson said.
The Security Council called for the attackers "to be brought swiftly to justice." The council condemnation was in the form of a statement to the press. It requires the consensus of all members but is not as forceful as a presidential statement or legally binding as a resolution.
The president of the Security Council, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, spoke of "dramatic, tragic developments in Mogadishu" and passed on the Security Council's condolences to the families of the victims and the Somali government.
Two men stormed the Muna hotel in Somalia's capital Mogadishu and detonated explosives, officials reported. The Islamist rebel group Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the bloodshed.
It is not the group's first attack against the transitional government of Somalia and the African Union troops that try to protect the government. Al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Dhere said his group would not stop fighting until the AU peacekeeping troops leave Somalia.
The Security Council said it stands strongly behind the transitional government of Somalia and supports the AU peacekeeping mission, known as AMISOM. Churkin emphasized the Security Council's "continued appreciation" for the work of the African Union troops sent from Uganda and Burundi.
In light of ongoing fighting in Mogadishu, the Security Council highlighted "the need to continue strengthening Somali security institutions." Churkin also pointed to "the importance of an inclusive dialogue in the peace process".
Journalists said the attackers committed suicide after government security forces surrounded the Muna Hotel, located near the presidential palace.
"Just before 11 a.m. two attackers, a gunman and a suicide bomber, gained access to a hotel in Mogadishu," according to Maj. Barigye Ba Hoku, spokesman for the African Union Mission in Somalia.
The assault on the hotel came as the death toll rose from some of the fiercest fighting in Somalia's capital in months.
An ambulance group reported having difficulty reaching the wounded, the director of that service has said.
Pitched battles between government forces and Al Shabaab militiamen have escalated in Mogadishu this week, leaving injured residents literally caught in the crossfire.
"There are 11 students trapped in a school right now," Ali Muse, head of Life Line Africa, a local Somali charity running the country's only private ambulance service, said Tuesday. "It is too dangerous for our ambulances to collect them."
Muse said the gunbattles were centered in Bakara Market, where many women live and hawk their goods to locals. The area is controlled by Al Shabaab.
"Many women have been killed," Muse said, adding that it is a "very crowded area."
"We are launching a final war to terminate the invading infidels in Mogadishu and all forces from the Islamic provinces are going to take part and we will wipe out the enemies out of Mogadishu," Sheikh Ali said on Monday.
The fighting has been a persistent and overwhelming problem for civilians.
"The situation in Mogadishu -- and Somalia, if it is not checked -- it is likely to escalate and get more complicated and will be difficult to resolve," Wafula Wamunyinyi, the deputy special representative of the chairperson of the African Union Commission for Somalia, said at a press conference in Nairobi on Monday.
"We have taken measures to ensure that we control the issue of civilian casualties," he continued. "We are working on the training for all of our peacekeepers and we are giving priority for protection of civilians."
Wamunyinyi said the international community needs to take a close look at Somalia's problems, especially in light of the July terrorist attack in Kampala, Uganda, that left 76 dead. Al Shabaab, which controls much of southern Somalia, claimed responsibility for the act.
"Somalia needs to be taken more seriously now, rather than later," he said. "The issue of Somalia has not received the seriousness that it has deserved, so we want to appeal to encourage that we need to support the peace process."
Separately, Madina Hospital in south Mogadishu said it had received more than 100 wounded people in Monday's fighting alone.
Somalia was ranked in 2010 as the worst failed state in the world, according to Foreign Policy magazine's annual index of such nations. Chad and Sudan, respectively, round out the top three failed states.
martes, 24 de agosto de 2010
miércoles, 18 de agosto de 2010
Businesses resist 'conflict minerals' law
Businesses resist 'conflict minerals' law
Children wash copper on July 9 at an open-air mine in Kamatanda in the rich mining province of Katanga, southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
US manufacturers are mounting a lobbying campaign over a provision slipped into the financial reform legislation requiring companies to declare products containing minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Dodd-Frank act includes a clause which effectively classifies resources from Congo as "conflict minerals", mimicking previous campaigns which targeted so-called "blood diamonds" from countries with poor human rights records.
The mandatory disclosure follows public pressure to extend the curbs on diamonds to the trade in minerals that has helped to fuel conflict in the Congo. "This will affect almost every US manufacturing sector. It covers coltan and ultimately tin, which are used right across industry," said Rick Goss, a vice president at the Information Technology Industry Council.
Widespread use of minerals from the region in electronics products has triggered headlines attacking companies such as Apple and Microsoft for selling "genocide phones".
Under the new law, any US-listed company whose products require the affected minerals for their manufacture or "functionality" will have to report annually on whether the metals can be traced back to the Congo region. Manufacturers who cannot declare their products "conflict free" will have to produce an independently audited report on the steps taken to ascertain the source of the minerals.
Children wash copper on July 9 at an open-air mine in Kamatanda in the rich mining province of Katanga, southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
US manufacturers are mounting a lobbying campaign over a provision slipped into the financial reform legislation requiring companies to declare products containing minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Dodd-Frank act includes a clause which effectively classifies resources from Congo as "conflict minerals", mimicking previous campaigns which targeted so-called "blood diamonds" from countries with poor human rights records.
The mandatory disclosure follows public pressure to extend the curbs on diamonds to the trade in minerals that has helped to fuel conflict in the Congo. "This will affect almost every US manufacturing sector. It covers coltan and ultimately tin, which are used right across industry," said Rick Goss, a vice president at the Information Technology Industry Council.
Widespread use of minerals from the region in electronics products has triggered headlines attacking companies such as Apple and Microsoft for selling "genocide phones".
Under the new law, any US-listed company whose products require the affected minerals for their manufacture or "functionality" will have to report annually on whether the metals can be traced back to the Congo region. Manufacturers who cannot declare their products "conflict free" will have to produce an independently audited report on the steps taken to ascertain the source of the minerals.
Looking at Pakistan's desperation through a camera lens
(CNN) -- The boy stood out because of the bright blue shirt he was wearing, not for his arms stretched toward the heavens or the look in his eyes that said: I am hungry.
All the other boys were desperate, too.
Photographer Paula Bronstein looked down at them from the Pakistani military helicopter about to drop food and water. She would never know their names but she would tell their story.
Click. click. click.
The boy in the blue shirt is one of 20 million Pakistanis suffering in a land washed away by massive monsoon flooding.
All the other boys were desperate, too.
Photographer Paula Bronstein looked down at them from the Pakistani military helicopter about to drop food and water. She would never know their names but she would tell their story.
Click. click. click.
The boy in the blue shirt is one of 20 million Pakistanis suffering in a land washed away by massive monsoon flooding.
Lawmakers in Mexico to Debate Drug Fight
MEXICO CITY — President Felipe Calderón plans to invite legislators to participate later this week in his continuing discussions with all of Mexico’s political establishment about how to win the war against the drug cartels, his office said Wednesday.
Related
Times Topics: Mexican Drug Trafficking | MexicoWith the pace of killings rising, officials have backed off their effort to persuade Mexicans that the mounting death toll was proof that the government was succeeding in disrupting the cartels. Instead, Mr. Calderón set up the high-level forums in an effort to show that the Mexican government was willing to engage its critics and listen to suggestions.
“What I ask, simply, is for clear ideas and precise proposals on how to improve this strategy,” he said during one of the meetings last week, when he heard from governors, judges and mayors. On Tuesday, Mr. Calderón’s office said letters had already gone to the legislators, requesting a Thursday meeting. But on Wednesday, the office said that details of the meeting, including the timing, were still being negotiated, and that the letters had not yet been sent.
In any case, for the people on the front lines, particularly in northern Mexico, the discussions of money-laundering, police reform and efforts to steer young people away from gangs are distant.
The government said earlier this month that 28,228 people had been killed since the government began its crackdown on drug cartels at the end of 2006. Of those, 2,076 were local, state or federal police officers, according to the Public Security Ministry.
The past few days have offered only more violence — murders that the police and prosecutors are unlikely to solve.
On Tuesday, newspapers gave prominent coverage to a video, released by the Public Security Ministry, in which a suspected member of the Ciudad Juárez drug gang La Línea, Rogelio Amaya Martínez, says that his gang is recruiting attractive young women to carry out killings. “They are pretty, good-looking adolescents, to fool our adversaries more,” Mr. Amaya Martínez said.
In the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, five prisoners were found dead Tuesday in the state prison in Culiacán, the capital. So far, 26 prisoners have been killed in the jail, according to the prison director, Carlos Suárez.
In Ciudad Juárez, the border city that has been ground zero of the war against the cartels, a bloody weekend left 51 people dead between Friday and Sunday, according to a state police spokesman, The El Paso Times reported.
Among the dead were six people who were killed when gunmen burst into a private party and began shooting.
In the northern state of Nuevo León, gunmen kidnapped Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos of Santiago, a colonial town that is a weekend getaway for Monterrey residents. He was taken from his house at midnight on Sunday. Mayor Cavazos had been trying to clean up the town’s corrupt police force, said Nuevo León’s governor, Rodrigo Medina.
Then on Wednesday, news agencies reported that Mexican security forces found the mayor’s body. He had been bound and dumped on a rural road.
Monterrey, Mexico’s third largest city and its industrial capital, spent much of the weekend paralyzed by roadblocks set up by rival drug gangs after a shootout to prevent the police from pursuing the gunmen. Local news media reported that gunmen forced motorists from their cars and drivers from their trucks so they could use the vehicles to close off the roads.
In Oaxaca, seven bodies were found Sunday piled atop the bed of a pickup truck. The state secretary for public security said the victims, all men, were going hunting when they were surprised by an armed group.
Related
Times Topics: Mexican Drug Trafficking | MexicoWith the pace of killings rising, officials have backed off their effort to persuade Mexicans that the mounting death toll was proof that the government was succeeding in disrupting the cartels. Instead, Mr. Calderón set up the high-level forums in an effort to show that the Mexican government was willing to engage its critics and listen to suggestions.
“What I ask, simply, is for clear ideas and precise proposals on how to improve this strategy,” he said during one of the meetings last week, when he heard from governors, judges and mayors. On Tuesday, Mr. Calderón’s office said letters had already gone to the legislators, requesting a Thursday meeting. But on Wednesday, the office said that details of the meeting, including the timing, were still being negotiated, and that the letters had not yet been sent.
In any case, for the people on the front lines, particularly in northern Mexico, the discussions of money-laundering, police reform and efforts to steer young people away from gangs are distant.
The government said earlier this month that 28,228 people had been killed since the government began its crackdown on drug cartels at the end of 2006. Of those, 2,076 were local, state or federal police officers, according to the Public Security Ministry.
The past few days have offered only more violence — murders that the police and prosecutors are unlikely to solve.
On Tuesday, newspapers gave prominent coverage to a video, released by the Public Security Ministry, in which a suspected member of the Ciudad Juárez drug gang La Línea, Rogelio Amaya Martínez, says that his gang is recruiting attractive young women to carry out killings. “They are pretty, good-looking adolescents, to fool our adversaries more,” Mr. Amaya Martínez said.
In the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa, five prisoners were found dead Tuesday in the state prison in Culiacán, the capital. So far, 26 prisoners have been killed in the jail, according to the prison director, Carlos Suárez.
In Ciudad Juárez, the border city that has been ground zero of the war against the cartels, a bloody weekend left 51 people dead between Friday and Sunday, according to a state police spokesman, The El Paso Times reported.
Among the dead were six people who were killed when gunmen burst into a private party and began shooting.
In the northern state of Nuevo León, gunmen kidnapped Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos of Santiago, a colonial town that is a weekend getaway for Monterrey residents. He was taken from his house at midnight on Sunday. Mayor Cavazos had been trying to clean up the town’s corrupt police force, said Nuevo León’s governor, Rodrigo Medina.
Then on Wednesday, news agencies reported that Mexican security forces found the mayor’s body. He had been bound and dumped on a rural road.
Monterrey, Mexico’s third largest city and its industrial capital, spent much of the weekend paralyzed by roadblocks set up by rival drug gangs after a shootout to prevent the police from pursuing the gunmen. Local news media reported that gunmen forced motorists from their cars and drivers from their trucks so they could use the vehicles to close off the roads.
In Oaxaca, seven bodies were found Sunday piled atop the bed of a pickup truck. The state secretary for public security said the victims, all men, were going hunting when they were surprised by an armed group.
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