Islamist gunmen kill at least 34 in Kenya attack

At least 34 people were killed overnight when suspected Shebab militants from Somalia attacked hotels, restaurants and government offices in a Kenyan coastal town, officials said Monday.

Al-Shebab fighters perform military exercises in the Lafofe area, south of Mogadishu, Somalia. Kenyan authorities blamed the group for Sunday night's attack.

Heavily armed gunmen stormed into the town of Mpeketoni, near the coastal island and popular tourist resort of Lamu, late on Sunday. District deputy commissioner Benson Maisori said several buildings including hotels, restaurants, banks and government offices were burned down.

"There were around 50 attackers, heavily armed in three vehicles, and they were flying the Shebab flag. They were shouting in Somali and shouting 'Allahu Akbar' ('God is Greatest')," he said.

Fierce gun battles began Sunday evening and continued into the early hours of Monday morning, but by dawn, the town of Mpeketoni was reported calm.

"More bodies have been found and what we have now is 34," a local police official said, signalling the toll could rise further because "the search for more bodies is still underway."

The Kenyan Red Cross also confirmed 34 dead.

"Our officers are still combing the area," Kenyan police chief David Kimaiyo also told AFP.

"We suspect the involvement of Al-Shebab in this attack. We are appealing for calm as we do our best the search for the attackers. It is a very unfortunate incident."

Kenyan troops crossed into southern Somalia in 2011 to fight the Shebab, later joining the now 22,000-strong African Union force battling the Al-Qaeda-linked militants.

The Shebab vowed revenge, carrying out a string of attacks on Kenyan soil, including last September's assualt on Nairobi's Westgate mall in which at least 67 people were killed.

'Bodies on the road'

The town of Mpeketoni, a trading centre on the main coastal road, lies on the mainland some 30 kilometres (20 miles) southwest of Lamu island, a popular tourist destination whose ancient architecture is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Cafes and bars were reportedly packed with people watching the World Cup on television when the gunmen attacked.

Kenyan army spokesman Major Emmanuel Chirchir described how the gunmen had stormed the town, overwhelming local police officers, and firing from vehicles "shooting people around in town."

Chirchir also said the attackers were "likely to be Al-Shebab," although there was no immediate claim of responsiblity from the Islamists themselves.

Military surveillance planes were launched shortly after the attack began.

Attackers tried to storm a police post including an armoury, but Maisori said officers had defended the building and fought the gunmen off.

Residents in villages surrounding the town also reporting that the gunmen attacked settlements as they pulled out after fighting in Mpeketoni.

"There are six bodies here, a man and a child in their house, four lying on the road," said Mohammed Hassan, a local resident of Kibaoni, a small settlement some five kilometres (three miles) outside the town.

Last month one of the Shebab's most senior commanders, Fuad Mohamed Khalaf, released radio broadcasts urging fighters to strike Kenya.

Hundreds of British tourists were also evacuated last month from beach resorts near Kenya's port city of Mombasa following new warnings of terror attacks from Britain's Foreign Office.

Britain this week released warnings to citizens in several East African nations -- including Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, who all have troops in Somalia -- speaking of the threat of attacks at public screenings of the World Cup.

The Shebab claimed responsiblity last month for killing two Kenyan soldiers in the same district as Sunday's attack, although further north nearer to the lawless border zone with Somalia.

Rio officer shoots live round during Cup protests

A motorcycle policeman can be seen on an Associated Press video firing what appeared to be a live pistol round at anti-World Cup protesters Sunday near Rio de Janeiro's Maracana soccer stadium.

A man who identified himself as a police officer points his gun at anti-World Cup protesters blocking a road that leads to the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, June 15.

During the small but violent and chaotic protest that played out about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) from the stadium, another man in plainclothes who identified himself as a police officer also pulled a pistol and fired two shots into the air.

Pedro Dantas, a spokesman for the Rio de Janeiro security secretariat that oversees all security forces, said in a phone interview that if authorities verify the accuracy of the video, "we'll immediately open an investigation into the incident."

In a later emailed statement, the secretariat said riot police were hit by Molotov cocktails thrown by protesters. The statement didn't indicate if any officers were hurt.


The action took place around the beginning of the soccer game between Argentina and Bosnia-Herzegovina — the first World Cup match played in Maracana stadium since 1950.

"We're seeing tonight the same police brutality we've seen during the past year, and that's why we have to keep protesting," said Karen Rodrigues, a 23-year-old student at the demonstration that drew around 200 people.

Another protest occurred in the capital, Brasilia, but drew only a handful of participants, and a small protest also was held in Porto Alegre.

Mass protests broke out across Brazil during last year's Confederations Cup soccer tournament, the warm-up to FIFA's premier event. At that time, more than 1 million Brazilians took to the streets on a single day in the largest demonstrations this South American nation had seen in a generation.

But those mass protests died down after about two weeks. Since then, hundreds of smaller, violent protests have been seen across the country, though primarily in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

The demonstrations have turned violent largely because of the almost constant presence of masked adherents to the "Black Bloc" tactic of protest. Black Bloc is a violent form of protest and vandalism that emerged in the 1980s in West Germany and helped shut down the 1999 World Trade Summit in Seattle.

The masked, young Brazilians are following the main anti-capitalist tenets of earlier versions, routinely smashing the windows of banks and multinational businesses, as happened Sunday night near Maracana.

The protest turned violent as demonstrators left the plaza where they gathered and marched toward the stadium on a main avenue. When they reached a security perimeter about a kilometer (half mile) from the stadium, riot police unleashed tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the crowd.

The protesters sprinted into a maze of smaller streets as World Cup fans drinking in small bars looked on. As the protesters regrouped and ran down roads, they frightened families with small children pressed themselves against buildings or took refuge in restaurants or taverns.

Before the violence broke out, the protesters marched through streets and chanted "FIFA, go back to Switzerland," referring to international soccer's governing organization. The protesters are angry over the lavish public spending on stadiums for the World Cup while conditions in Brazil's schools and hospitals remain woeful.

Anti-World Cup demonstrators march near Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, June 15.

Brazilians, angry at cost, in a sour mood as World Cup opens

On the eve of international soccer's once-every-four-years celebration of the world's most popular sport, 65-year-old Caetano De Carvalho is in a prime location, or so it would seem.

This working-class suburb of Sao Paulo, where he has lived for 22 years, offers an easy walk to the modern new soccer stadium where the World Cup's opening match between host Brazil and Croatia will be played Thursday.

A boy wrapped in a Brazilian national flag stands in front of policemen and listens to a protest by metro workers in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Monday June 9, 2014.

Like many Brazilians, he worships the sport and relishes any chance to talk about it. "You know, I came out of the womb a Corinthians fan," he said, referring to one of Brazil's most popular professional teams, which will make the new stadium its home when the World Cup ends.

Yet De Carvalho's mood is sour. He admits he won't be attending any World Cup matches. "Someone is going to have to pay for this," he complained, meaning all the construction that went into hosting the tournament. "We are going to have pay for the stadiums." By "we," he means Brazilian taxpayers.

Brazil has done more perhaps than any other nation to feed international soccer's popularity. It's sent its best players to Europe's top professional leagues, where their frenetic play-making helps drive interest in places as far off as Bangladesh and China. So many here saw it as just when world soccer's governing body, FIFA, in 2007 awarded Brazil the rights to host this year's World Cup.

Now, however, the euphoria is gone, as Brazilians begin to think that the country has missed a huge opportunity to address its most serious problems. "If you go two kilometers beyond the stadium, you'll see all the needs Brazil has," De Carvalho said, mentioning in particular inadequate schools and health care.

He is not alone. A Pew Research poll released earlier this month found that 61 percent of Brazilians think hosting the World Cup is bad for Brazil, believing that it takes money away from schools, health care and other public services. A survey in April by Brazilian pollster Datafolha found support for hosting the World Cup was just 48 percent, down from 79 percent in November 2008.

Driving that dismay is the cost of hosting the tournament — teams from 32 countries playing 64 games around the country. Brazil is spending $11.6 billion on stadiums in 12 cities and hundreds of other projects. Except for $2 billion, it is all publicly financed. American geographer Christopher Gaffney, who studies soccer and its impact on society, says the cost of Brazil's World Cup is the highest ever — $6,023 per seat, up from $5,299 for the 2010 cup in South Africa.

"This entire project is to benefit the Brazilian elite. That comes at the cost of the poor," Gaffney said.

Adding to the ire is a lack of information on who is making money off the spectacle. "Contracts were never made available," said Gil Castello Branco, the head of Contas Abertas, or Open Accounts, a group that promotes transparency.

The entire organization of the World Cup, Branco said, "is a mystery, and this generates a lot of suspicion" among the public.

Indeed, Brazilians have mostly scorn for FIFA, the Geneva-based organization that runs the games. "They are a mafia," said De Carvalho. "They do whatever they want."

FIFA head Sepp Blatter proved that point this week with his stay at one of Sao Paulo's most exclusive hotels, accompanied by a security detail that many heads of state would envy. Local news media reported that when he left the hotel this week, officials closed off the entire street, denying passage to an ambulance.

"Total arrogance" is how 37-year-old Ana Paula Manca, also a Vila Carmosina resident, describes FIFA, adding, "They don't have the least concern for the country."

Many Brazilians also feel let down by their government, which pledged in 2007 that the cost of the stadiums and other improvements would be privately financed. "There will not be a single cent of public money," said Orlando Silva Junior, then the minister of sports.

Not only did that turn out to be untrue, but many projects that would have improved the lives of average Brazilians also remain unfinished, like the monorail that is supposed to connect the Sao Paulo airport with the city's extensive subway system.

Making matters worse, entire neighborhoods of mostly poor people were forced from their homes to make way for the projects, including scores of residents of an area that was cleared to make way for a parking lot at the legendary Maracana Stadium, where the tournament's championship game will be played July 13.

The biggest irony, for some, is the possibility that the World Cup will in the end jeopardize soccer in Brazil, where many teams, especially smaller ones, are already struggling financially.

After expensive stadium renovations, "the public that used to go to games at Maracana is not the same public that now attends games at Maracana," said Branco of Contas Abertas. "Today they cannot afford to buy tickets."

"I don't know if Brazilians have the ability to go to three to four games per month paying two to three times more in price," said Rafael Plastina, a Sao Paulo-based sports consultant. That means that teams "will have to bring new people into the stadium, people with more financial acquisitive power."

And that will change the view of soccer as an everyman's sport. "I don't have any doubt about that," he said.

5 US troops killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan

Five American troops were killed in an apparent coalition airstrike in southern Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday, in one of the worst friendly fire incidents involving United States and coalition troops since the start of the nearly 14 year war.

Map locates Afghanistan where 5 US troops were reportedly killed by friendly fire Monday, June 9, 2014.

The U.S.-led international coalition said the service members were killed in an apparent friendly fire incident, which an Afghan official said was an airstrike in southern Zabul province. A statement said all five soldiers died on Monday but did not give further details on the attack.

"Five American troops were killed yesterday during a security operation in southern Afghanistan. Investigators are looking into the likelihood that friendly fire was the cause. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of these fallen," Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

If confirmed, it would be one of the most serious cases involving coalition-on-coalition friendly fire during the war.

"The casualties occurred during a security operation when their unit came into contact with enemy forces. Tragically, there is the possibility that fratricide may have been involved. The incident is under investigation," the coalition said in an earlier announcement.

One of the worst such incidents came in April 2002 when four Canadian soldiers were killed by an American F-16 jet fighter which dropped a bomb on a group of troops during night firing exercise in southern Kandahar.

A senior police official in southern Zabul said the coalition soldiers were killed when they called for close air support.

Provincial police chief Gen. Ghulam Sakhi Rooghlawanay said there was a joint operation by Afghan and NATO troops in the area's Arghandab district early Monday. After that operation was over, the troops came under attack from the Taliban and called in air support, he said.

"After the operation was over on the way back, the joint forces came under the attack of insurgents, and then foreign forces called for air support. Unfortunately five NATO soldiers and one Afghan army officer were killed mistakenly by NATO air strike," Rooghlawanay said.

There was no way to independently confirm Rooghlawanay's comments. The coalition would not comment and NATO headquarters in Brussels also declined to comment.

The only U.S. troops now involved in combat operations are usually Special Operations Forces that mentor their Afghan counterparts. They often come under fire and are responsible for calling in air support when needed. Because of constraints placed by outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai, such air strikes are usually called "in extremis," or when troops fear they are about to be killed.

Karzai blamed a similar airstrike called in by special forces mentoring an Afghan operation for killing a dozen civilians during an operation in northern Parwan province. The U.S. military vehemently denied the charge, saying that two civilians were killed in crossfire with Taliban militants and that airstrike was called in when forces thought they were about to be killed by insurgents.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack against the joint force in Zabul.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said a battle took place on Monday night between foreign troops and Taliban fighters in the Arghandab district. Ahmadi claimed a "huge number" of NATO soldiers were killed or wounded in the fighting. The Taliban often exaggerate their claims.

Separately, a NATO statement said a service member died Monday as a result of a non-battle injury in eastern Afghanistan.

The deaths bring to 36 the number of NATO soldiers killed so far this year in Afghanistan, with eight service members killed in June.

The insurgents have intensified attacks on Afghan and foreign forces ahead of the country's presidential election runoff Saturday. Officials are concerned there could be more violence around the time of the vote, although the first round in April passed relatively peacefully.

Casualties have been falling in the U.S.-led military coalition as its forces pull back to allow the Afghan army and police to fight the Taliban insurgency. All combat troops are scheduled to be withdrawn from the country by the end of this year.

Bosnia flooding triggers landslides,unearths mines

Floodwaters triggered more than 2,000 landslides across much of the Balkans on Sunday, laying waste to entire towns and villages and disturbing land mines left over from the region's 1990s war, along with warning signs that marked the unexploded devices.

Bosnian people hang from the back of a car during evacuation from their flooded homes in the village of Dvorovi, near Bijeljina 200 kms north of Sarajevo, Bosnia, Saturday May 17, 2014.

The Balkans' worst flooding since record keeping began forced tens of thousands of people from their homes and threatened to inundate Serbia's main power plant.

Authorities organized a frenzied helicopter airlift to get terrified families to safety before the water swallowed up their homes. Many were plucked from rooftops.

Water receded Sunday in some locations, laying bare the full scale of the damage. Elsewhere, authorities warned that floodwaters would keep rising into Sunday night.

"The situation is catastrophic," said Bosnia's refugee minister, Adil Osmanovic.

Three months' worth of rain fell on the region in three days, producing the worst floods since rainfall measurements began 120 years ago. At least two dozen people have died, with more casualties expected.

The rain caused an estimated 2,100 landslides that covered roads, homes and whole villages throughout hilly Bosnia.

The cities of Orasje and Brcko in northeast Bosnia, where the Sava River forms the natural border with Croatia, were in danger of being overwhelmed. Officials in Brcko ordered six villages to be evacuated.

Rescuers urged people to go to the balconies or rooftops of their houses with bright fabric to make themselves visible.

Brcko Mayor Anto Domic said that unless the Bosnian Army is able to reinforce from the air, the city will be flooded completely. He called for the Defense Ministry to use helicopters to lower steel barriers that could be backed by sandbags to contain the water.

"It is a very demanding task," he said, acknowledging that officials would have no other way to protect the port city of more than 70,000.

Civil protection commander Fahrudin Solak said the Sava River was spilling over a separate water barrier in Orasje while emergency workers tried desperately to reinforce it with sandbags.

In Serbia, where floods have inundated towns and villages, authorities braced for high water that could last for several more days.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said Sunday that 12 bodies have been found so far in Obrenovac, site of the coal-fired Nikola Tesla power plant, Serbia's biggest.

The situation is of grave concern in Serbia, as parts of the plant and a nearby mine that provides its fuel are already underwater.

Serbia's state power company, EPS, said crews were doing all they could to prevent any further damage to the plant. Damage to the mine alone is estimated at more than 100 million euros ($137 million).

The floods and landslides raised fears about the estimated 1 million land mines planted during Bosnia's 1992-95 war. Nearly 120,000 of the unexploded devices remain in more than 9,400 carefully marked minefields. But the weather toppled warning signs and, in many cases, dislodged the mines themselves.


Loose mines could create an international problem if floodwaters carry the explosives downstream. Experts warned that mines could travel through half of southeast Europe or get stuck in the turbines of a hydroelectric dam.

From the air, the northeastern third of Bosnia resembled a huge muddy lake, with houses, roads and rail lines submerged. Officials say about a million people — more than a quarter of the country's population — live in the worst-affected areas.

The hillside village of Horozovina, close to the northeastern town of Tuzla, was practically split in two by a landslide that swallowed eight houses. More than 100 other houses were under threat from the restless earth. Residents told stories of narrow escapes from injury or death.

"I am homeless. I have nothing left, not even a toothpick," Mesan Ikanovic said. "I ran out of the house barefoot, carrying children in my arms."

Ikanovic said 10 minutes separated him and his family from likely death. He carried his 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son to safety.

He said he had secured a mortgage and moved in only last year. "Now I have nothing," he said. "Where will I go now? Where will we live?"

Semid Ivilic's house in the lower part of the village was still standing. But looking up at the mass of earth and rubble that engulfed his neighbors' homes, he said he was worried.

"Nobody is coming to help us," he said.

The final person to evacuate a village near Brcko said he had lost everything he valued.

"I was the last one to leave," said 72-year-old Anto Zuparic. "I left everything behind, my cattle and everything else. I do not know what to do. I am glad I won't live much longer anyway."

More than 10,000 people have already been rescued from the town of Bijeljina in northeast Bosnia. Trucks, buses and private cars were heading north with volunteers and tons of aid collected by people in cities outside the disaster zone.

The Bosnian Army said it had 1,500 troops helping on the ground. But many bridges have been washed away, leaving many communities dependent on airlifts.

Helicopters from the European Union, Slovenia and Croatia were also aiding rescue efforts.

Large parts of eastern Croatia were underwater too, with several villages cut off and hundreds still fleeing the flooded zone in boats and trucks. Refugees were being housed in sports halls and schools, and aid centers were set up to distribute medicine, food, blankets and clothing.

In Serbia, more than 20,000 people have been forced from their homes.

Serbian police officers carry a man from a military helicopter during flood evacuation from Obrenovac, some 30 kilometers (18 miles) southwest of Belgrade Serbia, Saturday, May 17, 2014.

After Modi's big win,is the Gandhi political dynasty finished in India?

NEW DELHI — On Friday, as opposition leader Narendra Modi swept to victory and fireworks exploded throughout the capital, the mood at the governing Congress party headquarters was grim.

Late in the afternoon, the mother and son who lead India’s oldest political dynasty finally emerged to speak to supporters and journalists.

“There’s a lot for us to think about,” said a chastened Rahul Gandhi, the party’s heir apparent and chief campaigner. “As vice president of the party, I hold myself responsible for what has happened.”

But then, as he stepped aside to let his mother speak, he smiled — some observers thought with relief. The Twitterverse took note.

Gandhi, whose lineage includes three prime ministers, had been groomed for India’s top job for a decade. But his evident ambivalence about the prospect was among the drivers of the Indian National Congress party’s worst drubbing in its history, analysts said. The party won just 44 seats in the 543-seat lower house of Parliament, while Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party took 282 in a landslide.

Even before the Gandhis departed without taking questions, the postmortem had begun: The Congress party was out of touch with voters, analysts said. Its leaders were corrupt and inefficient. And unlike the canny chief minister preparing for his triumphant arrival in the capital, they had missed India’s moment. Even Congress’s own members, still dazed by the scale of the defeat, could see that.

“India has changed,” said Sachin Pilot, 36, one of the Congress party’s younger leaders, who was defeated Friday in the state of Rajasthan. “The party has failed to connect with the new India of aspirations. We haven’t been able to tap into the imagination of the new India, the youth and the middle classes, the upwardly mobile people. . . . Somewhere our message was not clear, was not appropriate for the new era.”

The Congress party has governed the country for most of the years since India won its fight for independence from Britain in 1947. Many of its policies today have roots in the vision shaped by the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru — Rahul Gandhi’s great-grandfather — of uplifting the masses.

Yet, despite that history of political success and its recent 10-year rule, the party seemed woefully unprepared as it headed into the 2014 general election.

Rahul and his mother, Sonia, the Congress party president, campaigned in their usual way, appearing at large rallies where they emphasized signature subsidy programs such as distribution of wheat and grains to the poor, and talked about rural employment.

Modi, meanwhile, was spreading his message of economic opportunity via a sophisticated 24-hour campaign operation with millions of volunteers, including many from the Hindu nationalist movement, and teams of technology gurus to manage his wide-ranging social media efforts.

Modi’s campaign “was not about this dole or that dole; it was not about how much free rice or free wheat his party will give. It was about all the things that were wrong with the country — unemployment, corruption, inflation,” said Manisha Priyam, the India coordinator for research on elections at the London School of Economics. “No previous election in India has been able to remove welfare populism completely from its language. Modi has achieved that.”

Some voters said that the Gandhi family seemed elitist and out of touch with the people’s problems.

“The Congress party used to listen to us, but they no longer do,” said Usha Sharma, 64, a retiree from New Delhi. She said that the Congress party of years gone by would help with jobs but that she lacks running water even now. “There’s no point in voting for them.”

Rahul Gandhi, in particular, seemed unable to connect with voters, spending much of his time with his nose in his smartphone or going over spreadsheets with his cadre of advisers, many of whom had been educated overseas, party critics said. Many of his efforts to reach younger voters — such as a pilot primary system to make campaigns more egalitarian — failed. It was the 63-year-old Modi, who blogs and tweets, whom India’s more than 100 million first-time voters embraced.

The stunning defeat has led to a call for the first family’s ouster and to questions about whether the country’s long love affair with dynastic politics is finally over.

Conservative pundit Surjit S. Bhalla, in a piece titled “The Gandhis Should Resign” in Saturday’s Indian Express newspaper, wrote that the party and the dynasty are finished.

“When will the leaders realize that feudalism is over, that monarchy is over?” Bhalla wrote.

Yet, many of the party’s leaders fear that without the first family and its charisma, the party will fall apart. It splintered briefly in the 1990s before Sonia Gandhi, the widow of the slain former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, finally agreed to step in as president.

Pilot counters that the reality is “not so simplistic.”

“Some hard decisions have to be taken” when party leaders gather Monday to assess the damage, Pilot said. “We have to fix our shop on many fronts. Mrs. Sonia Gandhi led us to two successive victories and nobody at that time said the family was irrelevant. We all share the credit, and we have to share the blame, too.”