Death Toll 08/05 - 08/06/03

[DoYouEverWonder]

Suspected suicide blast kills 13 at luxury hotel in Jakarta

5 August 2003

Thirteen people, including at least one Westerner, were killed and 149 injured yesterday when a powerful explosion caused by a suspected suicide bombing ripped through a five-star hotel in central Jakarta.

The blast ­ the deadliest terrorist attack in Indonesia since October's Bali bombing ­ destroyed the lobby and ground-floor restaurant of the US-owned Marriott Hotel and shattered windows as high as the 30th floor. A Dutch banking executive was killed, but reports of other foreign fatalities were unconfirmed. Two Americans, two Chinese nationals, two Singaporeans, an Australian and a New Zealander were injured.

The explosion left a 10ft crater in front of the hotel lobby where the car was parked. Body parts were strewn across the front of the hotel and around the van assumed to have been used by the bomber, or bombers. A senior security official told The Independent: "This is the work of terrorists, but it is too early for us to point a finger at any particular group."

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The Indonesian Red Cross said 13 bodies had been removed. The Dutchman killed was Hans Winkelmolen, 49, president of PT Rabobank Duta Indonesia, who was due to return to the Netherlands at the end of this month.



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Mortar Mishap Kills 13 Afghan Soldiers



August 5, 2003, 5:59 AM EDT

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A soldier mishandled a mortar and the shell exploded, killing 13 troops and injuring nine others in northern Afghanistan, a warlord in the region said Monday.

Meanwhile, rival Afghan factions traded fire with automatic weapons and rocket launchers on Monday, wounding at least two civilians in the latest round of fighting in the north of the country, a military commander said.

The mortar was among five truckloads of weapons collected during a disarmament drive in Jozjan province, said Abdul Rashid Dostum, a warlord in the region whose soldiers were killed in the blast.

"One soldier was not experienced and he threw the mortar shell, and this caused the explosion," said Dostum, who is also a security adviser to President Hamid Karzai.


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Liberian Hospitals Jammed With Wounded

August 5, 2003, 2:01 AM EDT

MONROVIA, Liberia -- Sweat streaming down their faces, men in improvised red-cross bibs run through streets strewn with bullet casings pushing wheelbarrows with bloodied victims of another mortar barrage -- Monrovia's version of an ambulance service.

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Sheriff's hospital -- still partially destroyed from the last 1989-96 civil war -- has treated more than 1,000 war-injured since rebels fighting to oust President Charles Taylor launched their latest bid for the capital July 19.


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Bodies have piled up in the tiny morgue in what was meant to be a maternity ward -- now the only fully functioning part of the hospital. With fighting raging, many families are too afraid to venture from their homes to claim their dead.

On Monday, 66 bodies were taken to a makeshift cemetery on the outskirts of the city and buried in a mass grave.


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U.N. Policeman Killed in Attack in Kosovo


August 4, 2003, 3:48 PM EDT

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro -- The first fatal shooting of a U.N. policeman in Kosovo has shifted attention from ethnic tensions in the U.N.-controlled province to the underworld figures thought responsible for his death.

A sniper shot Satish Menon, 43, of India, shortly before midnight on Sunday as the policeman traveled in a U.N. car near the village of Slatina, 30 miles north of Kosovo's capital, Pristina, police said. A British officer driving the car was not wounded.

U.N. police chief Stefan Feller condemned the "brutal and unbelievable crime ... on an international police officer by cowards who intended to kill him," but he stopped short of assigning blame.

Menon is the first U.N. policeman murdered while on duty in Kosovo since the United Nations took control of the province four years ago.

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U.S. civilian contractor dies in Iraq blast


Tuesday, August 5, 2003

TIKRIT, Iraq (CNN) -- A civilian contractor from the United States was killed Tuesday in Iraq when the car he was driving ran over an improvised explosive device, the U.S. military said, on a day marked by a number of incidents in which a U.S. soldier was injured.

The contractor, whose identity was not disclosed, was in a military convoy when the explosion happened just north of Tikrit.

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According to The Associated Press, the contractor was employed by Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, a Houston-based oil field-services and construction company. The U.S. military offered no confirmation. Halliburton has contracts for reconstruction in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Fallujah, a U.S. soldier from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack when a mob shouting anti-U.S. slogans ransacked a police station. The crowd also set police cars on fire.



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French troops foil massacre in northeastern Congo


Tuesday, August 5, 2003

NYANDA, Congo (AP) -- French troops on helicopter patrol over the lush green savannah of troubled northeastern Congo stopped a massacre in progress Tuesday in a remote village, although nine villagers died, residents said.

The attack began before dawn when Lendu tribal fighters armed with automatic weapons and machetes raided this tiny village of the Hema tribe from two directions, chief Nguna Manasse said.

The attackers came in two waves, Manasse said. The first, dressed in military uniforms, fired on fleeing villagers; the second in civilian clothes hacked the wounded with machetes.

"There were so many of them, I could not count because we were running," Manasse said after he and other residents ventured back to the village 12 miles south of Bunia, the capital of troubled Ituri province.


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http://www.dawn.com/2003/08/05/top12.htm">Four shot dead in Valley

SRINAGAR, Aug 4: Indian security forces shot dead four militants in northern Kashmir and recovered a cache of explosives hidden in a mosque, a police spokesman claimed Monday.

The militants were killed by the army, backed by paramilitary troops, during two encounters in the northwestern districts of Baramula and Kupwara, he said.

Police identified two of the slain militants as Qadir Khan and Shaheen Sanwani, and claimed they hailed from Karachi.

Meanwhile, India's Border Security Force (BSF) and local police recovered 40 kilograms of white plastic explosives from a mosque in Srinagar. -AFP


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Army Stumped on Cause of Troop Illnesses

August 5, 2003, 8:39 PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- The Army is telling troops to take precautions as it tries to figure out the cause of pneumonia cases, including two deaths, among forces in the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns.

Officials are investigating the cause of some 100 cases of the illness counted since March, focusing on 15 cases so serious the patients had to be put on ventilators and flown to Europe, defense officials said at a Pentagon press conference Tuesday.

"We're deeply concerned about the deaths," David N. Tornberg, a deputy assistant secretary for health policy, said of the two fatal cases. "We'd like a comprehensive understanding to be available to the families, to the husbands, to the wives of our servicemen so they better understand the nature of these conditions."

So far, officials have pretty much ruled out exposure to anthrax, smallpox or any other biological or chemical weapon; to Legionnaires' disease; or to SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, said Col. Robert DeFraites, chief of preventive medicine in the Army surgeon general's office.


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An unidentifed man covers his mouth near the bodies of victims of a blast at a hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia, Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2003. A powerful bomb blast outside the Marriott Hotel in downtown Jakarta killed at least 10 people, including at least one foreigner, and wounded 103 others Tuesday in what an official said was likely a suicide attack. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim)





Members of the 173rd Airborne Brigade carry the casket of Specialist Justin Hebert towards a C-130 aircraft, while members from Kirkuk Air Base, Iraq (news - web sites) render a salute, on August 3, 2003. SPC Herbert, from Charlie Company 1/508 Infantry Battalion Airborne, was killed when the convoy he was on came under fire with rocket propelled grenades just south of Kirkuk on Aug 1. The attack also left three other soldiers seriously injured. REUTERS/Lee A Osberry Jr./U.S. Air Force




Justice workers collect the bodies of five men killed by unidentified gunnmen in Cucuta, on the northeastern border with Venezuela, Monday, Aug. 4, 2003. The five men, Franklin Polo Melesio, 17; Armando Escalante Pedroza, 25, Franklin Hernandez Rodrguez, 17, Jos ngel Ramrez, 17, and Adal Ramrez Zapata, 23, were killed Sunday night after leaving a bar where they played billards. The local police said they have no leads. Killings and massacres are common in this city where leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups are battling for control and many common criminals gangs are active. (AP Photo/Efrain Patino)

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