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© St. Petersburg Times, published December 29, 2002
Russia links Chechen blast to Arab militants
MOSCOW -- Russia blamed Islamic terrorists, including Arabs, on Saturday for a pair of explosions that devastated a government center in Chechnya on Friday, as investigators tried to figure out how three suicide bombers drove unmolested through a thicket of checkpoints set up to shield the complex from just such attacks.
Rescuers combed through the rubble in a desperate search for survivors, but nobody was pulled out alive Saturday. At least 57 people were confirmed dead and 121 wounded, said Yuri Kolodkin of the Emergency Situations Ministry. He said 61 people remained hospitalized, more than half of them in serious condition.
The bombers, in a heavy truck and a car and dressed in Russian military uniforms, blew up a four-story government center and an adjacent canteen that housed the top leaders and staff of the pro-Russian regional government. Several officials were seriously wounded, but Chechnya's prime minister and the head of the civil administration were not in the building.
A dragnet set up by Russian and Chechen police and military forces failed to lead to any arrests.
A Russian counterterrorism official in the Caucasus region, which includes Chechnya, said the attack was the work of Islamic militants led by a prominent Chechen warlord, Shamil Basayev, and an Arab, Abu al-Walid.
JERUSALEM -- Israeli troops shot to death a Palestinian child in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Palestinian medical workers said, while in the West Bank soldiers clashed with Palestinian students.
The unrest came a day after four Israelis died in a Palestinian attack on Jewish seminary students.
Palestinians said 9-year-old Hanneen Abu Suleiman was shot in the head outside her home in the Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis when troops opened fire from a Jewish settlement a few hundred yards away. The Israeli military said troops were returning fire.
Earlier, Israeli troops clashed with Palestinian university students during an operation near Bethlehem University. A military source said troops came under attack by students throwing stones from inside the college. Soldiers responded by firing rubber bullets and stun grenades into the building. No injuries were reported.
Also Saturday, Israeli troops blew up the house of an Islamic Jihad member near Otniel, the West Bank settlement targeted in the seminary attack. The military would not say if the militant, who was not at home at the time, was suspected in the seminary attack.
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuela received its first foreign shipment of gasoline Saturday, but the 525,000 barrels from Brazil were a drop in the bucket as the oil-rich nation suffers through shortages because of a strike against President Hugo Chavez.
The 27-day strike -- led by Venezuela's largest labor union, business chamber and workers at the state-owned oil monopoly -- has cut oil exports from 3-million barrels a day to 160,000, virtually evaporating gasoline supplies.
The strike began Dec. 2 to demand Chavez call a nonbinding referendum on his rule.
Mile-long lines formed for gasoline Saturday. Some motorists protested by blocking the Pan-American Highway outside Caracas.
Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, is seeking food and fuel abroad. The Brazilian tanker Amazonian Explorer delivered 525,000 barrels of gasoline, barely more than a normal day's demand. Trinidad and Tobago is sending 400,000 barrels of gas.
The Dominican Republic sent rice and Colombia sent 180,000 tons of food.
JAPAN: Emperor Akihito has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and will undergo surgery next month. Doctors believe that the cancer hasn't spread and that the emperor has a "good chance of a full recovery," he said. The emperor is scheduled to undergo an operation at Tokyo University Hospital in mid-January and will be hospitalized for about a month.
YEMEN: Jarallah Omar, the deputy secretary general of the Yemeni Socialist party, was shot to death after delivering a speech at the annual congress of the Islamic Reform Party in Sana. President Ali Abdullah Saleh condemned the killing and said Omar was a "victim of violence and extremism." An Interior Ministry official identified the assailant as Ali al-Jarallah and said he was a member of the Islamic Reform Party.