Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Death toll from tsunami surpasses 162,000

By Times wire
Published January 17, 2005

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz on Sunday wrapped up a visit to Indonesia, where officials along the obliterated Sumatran coast reported finding 5,000 more bodies, raising the death toll in one of the world's worst natural disasters to more than 162,000.

Also, the U.S. military plans to wind down its presence in Thailand and Sri Lanka over the next two weeks, according to Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Blackman, who is in charge of coordinating American relief efforts in South Asia.

Jakarta, meanwhile, backed away from an earlier call for foreign troops delivering relief to be out of the country by March 26 - three months to the day after the earthquake and tsunami hit 11 nations.

KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S. military released 81 Afghan prisoners from detention on Sunday in what Afghanistan's chief justice, Fazel Hadi Shinwari, described as the first stage of a reconciliation program under which many suspected Taliban fighters held by the Americans might be freed over the coming months.

In fresh violence, officials said a roadside bomb killed an Afghan soldier in eastern Kunar province on Friday, an Afghan died trying to plant a similar device farther south on Saturday and a grenade attack injured a pro-government mullah in central Uruzgan province.

WASHINGTON - Since at least last summer, the United States has conducted "secret reconnaissance missions" inside Iran in an effort to identify three dozen or more suspected nuclear, chemical and missile sites that could be destroyed with airstrikes and commando raids, according to a report Sunday in the New Yorker magazine.

The existence of the missions, described in an article by journalist Seymour M. Hersh, was not attributed to any source or document.

A senior White House aide - without citing any specific point of contention - denounced the article in a televised interview.

"I've seen excerpts of this story," said White House spokesman Dan Bartlett, appearing on CNN's Late Edition. "I think it's riddled with inaccuracies, and I don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing there are based on fact."

CROATIAN VOTE: Croatian President Stipe Mesic, who is credited for moving this ex-Yugoslav country closer to the West, overwhelmingly won a second term on Sunday. Mesic, 70, won 66 percent of the votes, the state-run Electoral Commission said. Jadranka Kosor, who was supported by the prime minister's party, garnered 34 percent. The results give Mesic a mandate until late 2009.

[Last modified January 17, 2005, 01:06:09]