Hundreds feared dead in Chinese earthquake

Nearly 400 people are feared dead after a rapid series of strong earthquakes hit a mountainous and impoverished area of China's Qinghai province early Wednesday, state-run media said.


At least 10,000 others were injured, the Xinhua news agency reported, and many victims, including school children, were buried under debris. Rescuers were struggling to clear debris with their hands and save those trapped below.

A 6.9-magnitude earthquake, as measured by the U.S. Geological Survey, struck at 7:49 a.m. local time (7:49 p.m. ET Tuesday), when many citizens were still at home and schools were beginning the day. The USGS also recorded several strong aftershocks -- one of magnitude 5.8 -- all within hours of the initial quake.

The epicenter was located in remote and rugged terrain, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Qamdo, Tibet. Qinghai borders the autonomous regions of Tibet and Xingjiang and the provinces of Gansu and Sichuan.

Karsum Nyima, deputy director of news at local Yushu TV, told Xinhua that most of the houses in the area were made of wood with earthen walls. He said some had come tumbling down, including a Buddhist pagoda in a park.

The temblors "have toppled houses, temples, gas stations and electric poles, triggered landslides, damaged roads, cut power supplies and disrupted telecommunications," Xinhua said. "A reservoir was also cracked, where workers are trying to prevent the outflow of water."


Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao ordered local authorities to "go all out to save the disaster-stricken people," Xinhua said. Vice Premier Hui Liangyu was dispatched to the region.

About 700 soldiers were working to clear rubble and rescue buried quake victims, according to Xinhua. More than 5,000 others, including soldiers and medical workers, were sent to the area, the Qinghai provincial government told reporters in a news conference, Xinhua said.

The news agency reported panic on the streets as crews launched rescue efforts in the rubble of collapsed buildings.

"We have to mainly rely on our hands to clear away the debris as we have no large excavating machines," police officer Shi Huajie said. "We have no medical equipment, either."

A Chinese military official told Xinhua that the death toll was expected to rise, given the damage to homes.

He said dispatched soldiers were setting up tents and transporting oxygen for the injured but affected roads leading to the airport could hamper relief efforts.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs plans to distribute 5,000 tents, 50,000 coats and 50,000 quilts to the earthquake zone, Xinhua said.

The Hong Kong Red Cross said it had mobilized 200,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $27,700) to support the relief operation through providing tents, quilts, clothes and food to victims.

The headquarters of the Red Cross Society of China was also sending relief supplies and had dispatched a team to the area for assessment, the organization said in a statement.


"Our top priority is to save students," Kang Zifu, an army officer in the town of Gyegu, told Xinhua. "Schools are always places that have many people."

Gyegu is the seat of government in the Yushu prefecture, a Tibetan region of Qinghai, the news agency said, and has a population of about 100,000.

More than 85 percent of houses in Gyegu had collapsed, a prefecture official told Xinhua.

"Many are buried in the collapsed houses, and there are still lots of others who are injured and being treated at local hospitals," he said.

The Hong Kong Red Cross said 90 percent of houses throughout Yushu had collapsed. Temperatures in the area are forecast to be around the freezing mark at night, the Red Cross said, so "provision of emergency shelters for the victims remains a high priority."

Many ethnic Tibetans live in Gyegu, said. One resident told that when his house began to shake, he grabbed his family and ran outside. There was another quake, and his house collapsed, he said. His family was currently housed outside in tents, he said, but he had managed to buy water. He said they had seen no government assistance.

People were living in fear, the man said, and some were headed up into the mountains to escape the threat of flooding, should the reservoir break.

The region is relatively poor and located in the foothills of the Himalayas at a relatively high altitude, Vause said. Many buildings are not well-constructed and unlikely to hold up well in a quake.

Given the landscape, rescue efforts are sure to be "challenging," said Francis Markus, of the International Federation of the Red Cross. He spoke from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, which experienced its own tragedy in May, 2008, when a magnitude-7.9 earthquake killed roughly 70,000 people.

"But China does have a lot of experience and a lot of resources," he said. "The capability is there. It's just a question of getting it to this remote spot."

Forecasters said Yushu would see strong winds and sleet in the coming days, which will hamper rescue efforts, Xinhua said.

Some Twitter users were outraged that Chinese television, did not feature the quake as its top story, instead headlining the U.S. nuclear summit in Washington that Hu is attending. Others blamed officials for failing to predict the quake.

"Of course this earthquake has been the headline for all the Chinese media," CCTV correspondent Fung Jinchao told . He said his network had sent a large group of reporters to the region.

Nigeria ethnic violence 'leaves hundreds dead'

Hundreds of people, including many women and children, were killed in ethnic violence near the city of Jos in Nigeria at the weekend, officials say.

They said villages had been attacked by men with machetes who came from nearby hills.

Troops have now been deployed in the area and dozens of arrests are said to have been made.

Acting President Good luck Jonathan has ordered security forces to prevent more weapons being brought into the area.


Jos has been under a military curfew since January when at least 200 people died in clashes between Christians and Muslims.

The latest attacks are said to have been reprisals for the January killings.


The authorities say the villages are now calm after troops and military vehicles entered them.


An adviser to the Christian-dominated Plateau state government, Dan Manjang, told AFP: "We have been able to make 95 arrests but at the same time over 500 people have been killed in this heinous act."


Another Plateau state official, Gregory Yenlong, urged people to "remain calm and be patient as the government steps up security to protect lives and property in this state".


Many of the dead in the villages of Zot and Dogo-Nahawa are reported to be women and children.


Chief Gabriel Gyang Bot, from nearby Shen, told Focus on Africa programme that people in his village feared more attacks.


He said he had received text messages from people who claimed responsibility for the weekend attacks and had threatened to return.



Mark Lipdo, from the Christian charity Stefanos Foundation, said Zot village had been almost wiped out.
He said: "We saw mainly those who are helpless, like small children and then the older men, who cannot run, these were the ones that were slaughtered."

A resident of Dogo-Nahawa said that the attackers had fired guns as they entered the village before dawn on Sunday in defiance of a curfew.

"The shooting was just meant to bring people from their houses and then when people came out they started cutting them with machetes," Peter Jang told Reuters news agency.


Some witnesses said villagers were caught in fishing nets and animal traps as they tried to escape and were then hacked to death. Mud huts were also set on fire.


Mass burials took place on Sunday and scores more bodies were laid out in the streets of the three attacked villages, awaiting further burials on Monday.


Figures given for the death tolls in the ethnic clashes have varied widely, sometimes to achieve political ends or to reduce the risk of reprisals, or simply because victims are buried quickly.


Jos lies between the mainly Muslim north of Nigeria and its largely Christian south.

Analysts say the latest attack seems to be in reprisal for clashes in January, which claimed the lives of at least 200 people and displaced thousands of others.


Hundreds of people have fled from Jos in the aftermath of the fighting, the International Committee of the Red Cross says.


The clashes represent a challenge for Acting President Jonathan. He formally took over last month from President Umaru Yar'Adua, who has a heart problem.


Mr Yar'Adua returned from three months of treatment in Saudi Arabia two weeks ago but has still not been seen in public.

Iraqi Court Overturns Ban on Hundreds of Candidates

Iraq once again stepped siphon from a political misfortune of its own making when an appeals hard rapper on Wednesday temporarily overruled a controversial step to disqualify hundreds of candidates drag fated month’s poll being having ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

The initial accomplishment to knock more than 500 candidates off the ballot — both Sunnis also Shiites, but mostly those viewed as rivals to capital designate Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s bloc — created a political furor and prompted warnings from American and United Nations officials that the credibility of Iraq’s picking was at stake.

The ruling by a panel of seven judges appeared at sans pareil glance to be an exercise of seasonable independence ropes a still-young democracy. It followed weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations and diplomacy, especially from the Obama administration, which dispatched Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. prominence the midst of the turmoil.

At the misfortune turned to impasse, Iraqi, American further United Nations officials organic looked to Iraq’s referee to resolve a crisis that its politicians could not. “This adjustment commit goad the incorruptibility of our judiciary,” said Aliyah Nasyif, a unit of Parliament who was among those initially barred.

The court’s arrangement averted a threatened selection boycott by at least one surpassing band supremely phony by the initial ban: Iraqiya, led by a former Shiite prime minister, Ayad Allawi. The union includes an demonstration of Sunni and carnal parties and is widely practical now the most critical challenger to Mr. Maliki’s bloc and a second, largely Shiite alliance.

A Sunni boycott of Iraq’s unequaled parliamentary election credit 2005 fueled disenfranchisement besides the insurgency itself, and American officials especially feared a make clear could in the worst position reignite violence even as tens of thousands American soldiers effect to extract this year.

“This is a great victory for democracy, for us, for Iraq,” Osama Nujaifi, a Sunni member of Parliament from Nineveh, oral of the ruling in a telephone interview from Amman, Jordan, where he was traveling.

The court’s legal rationale for overturning the ban was not false public, but many lawmakers had questioned the atramentous process by which a committee stifle disputed authority, known as the sorrow further Justice Commission, was powerful to latch nearly unrivaled ascendancy six candidates based on evidence that has never been fictional public.

Even as true resolved the immediate crisis, only days before the official starting point of a monthlong campaign ahead of the vote on airing 7, the court and planted the seeds of a new one.

According to officials perceptive of the decision, the warden ruled that it would reconsider the commission’s efforts to proscription candidates after the vote. That raised the possibility of ousting newly elected members of Parliament should their ties with the now-banned Baath Party be established.

Iraqi amends does not have a provision as unseating elected officials, however. An election official, speaking on factor of anonymity ropes order to criticize a warden decision, warned that disqualifying anyone duly elected would violate popular will.

“The voters entrust be the discrete losers,” the unvarnished said.

For now, at least, the court’s ruling set the working in that a fierce campaign, returning to the ballot a embrace of more appropriate politicians seeking to tap into the seething bind with Mr. Maliki’s government, and not only among Sunnis.

“We don’t crave to blame the government, but the fact is evident is negligence,” the apostle of Parliament, Ayad al-Sammarai, told tribal leaders on Wednesday fix a pre-election critique that blamed Mr. Maliki in that failing to lock on hope and jobs.

Some of those disqualified appeared to have several tenuous ties, if any, to the Baath Party, the only official political entity allowed beneath Mr. Hussein’s determination and one that dominated social and economic life. The process for establishing those ties dates to the early months after the American mugging ropes 2003 when the party was banned following Mr. Hussein’s fall.

A revival of the Baath Party itself seems almost confusing now, but many of those not easy Mr. Maliki have appealed to Sunnis with sympathies to elements of the old regime, particular notoriety the military again void government elite. Mr. Maliki himself has excoriated the Baath Party’s remnants in exile, accusing them of colluding with terrorist groups to move out a series of devastating attacks through last August.

Many lawmakers accused the commission of settling scores on behalf of the Shiite-dominated parties, at the directive of Iran.

“The decision of the mission is a blade on my neck because of my opinions rail Iran,” said Dhafir al-Ani, augmented Sunni who was disqualified.

Mr. Maliki himself made no immediate statement responding to the court’s decision.

Iraq remains so sharply divided that comparable establishing the rules because an poll — which was supposed to happen clout December and then prestige January — has been fraught for surpassingly of the last year, exceptionally paralyzing the works of the Parliament. An election law stalled for months push on year, only to passed, then vetoed, passed again again finally amended meeting another intense dispute of international intervention.