The Fate of women under the Taliban: The Truth that was never exposed

"Based on a survey by the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA), 80% of schools for girls located in villages across Afghanistan and controlled by the Taliban are still operating. Pia Karlsson, Education Adviser of SCA, mentioned 85% of the girls are still going to school. In the Province of Kunduz, which is under the Taliban rule, 122 schools for girls are operating, with 390 registered female teachers!"

Afghanistan and Taliban are the main target in the anti-Muslim media to attack Islam and Muslims as though Taliban are the only Muslim in the world!

All the women (western feminists) who criticized the Burqa (their traditional dress), were silent when 2 millions Afghan citizens were dead due to the Russian bombs, they were silent when 500,000 Afghan citizens were handicapped because of landmines, and they were quiet when thousands of Afghan women were raped before the Taliban came to power.

General Hamid who had lived for some years under the Taliban, said: "There was never a campaign directed at allowing the beating of women and there was no prohibition for women to pursue education. There was only restriction on mixed-gender education."

There are so many fabrications on 'respected' websites in the internet about the 'suffering' of Afghan women, while at the same time there isn't any mention of date, name, location or any other data that could be verified. Hamid Gul said that he always noticed there were more women than men in the streets or in the markets during the Taliban era.

The Afghan who protested in the west were those who originated from the Khalq and Parcham factions who were Communists. They were not representatives of the majority of the Afghan society. The Taliban had to keep an eye on these communist women with an extra tight measure to ensure they would not cause any discord or troubles.

Women only have to wear the burqa in the streets, whereas at home they are free to wear any dress they like. Munur, a nurse said: "Women in the hospitals seldom wear the burqa and even the jilbab when there are no men in there."

During the pre-Taliban era, there were only 350 beds for women in the hospitals across Kabul. In August 2001, there were 950 beds in the hospitals which were specific for women only. Some of the hospitals that were exclusive for women were Rabia Balkhi Hospital, The Red Crescent of Kuwait Health Center and The Health Clinic for Infectious Disease.

There were also 32 clinics for women and children. Additionally, the women also received the services provided by the ICRC and the Sanday Gal Orthopaedic Centers. Only female doctors and nurses were working in the hospitals and clinics to give the healthcare services to the female patients.

However the Sun, Daily Express, New York Times, and all the journalists never report this story, the same goes for BBC, CNN, Fox News, etc. This is part of the campaign of lies so that the world populations would be against the Taliban. They lied that the women could not work, the women could not go out of the house, to go to school, or even to go to hospital, but all the above mentioned facts proved otherwise.

North Korea steps up missile test preparations

By Jon Herskovitz

SEOUL (Reuters) – Chinese fishing vessels have moved out of waters near a disputed sea border between the two Koreas, a South Korean military official said on Wednesday, possibly signaling a North Korean short-range missile test is imminent.

In another move that could stoke tensions, U.S. and South Korean news reports said the North has made further preparations to test its longest-range Taepodong-2 missile, with a launch possible in about a month.

North Korea usually orders its vessels to stay out of Yellow Sea waters off its west coast when it conducts short-range missile tests. China is the closest thing the North can claim as a major ally and is the impoverished state's biggest benefactor.

"The (Chinese) fishing boats have disappeared, but no other unusual moves have yet been detected," said an official with South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff who asked not to be named.

During its last test launch of short-range missiles in that area in October 2008, the North issued a no-sail order to its ships a few days before firing off missiles, South Korean government officials have said.

North Korean short-range missiles have a range of about 100-150 km (60-95 miles), which means they can hit all of the Seoul area and many U.S. military bases in South Korea.

Experts say the North may have hundreds of short-range missiles, and that the missiles have a proven capability due to recent successful tests.

CNN reported on its website (http://edition.cnn.com/) that North Korea also appeared to have positioned telemetry equipment at an east coast missile base it used when it last launched its Taepodong-2 missile in 2006.

The missile, which has never successfully flown but is designed to hit U.S. territory, fizzled seconds after it was fired in that test.

There was no evidence of a Taepodong-2 being moved to a launch pad, the U.S. official was quoted as saying.

"Vehicles carrying equipment needed for missile launch were moving toward the (east cost) Musudan-ri base," Yonhap news agency quoted a South Korean government source as saying.

The source said that if the North continued at its current pace, it could launch a Taepodong-2 in a month. South Korean officials were not immediately available for comment.

Impoverished North Korea, angry at the hardline policies of the South's government, in recent weeks has stepped up tension by threatening to reduce its wealthy southern neighbor to ashes.

PRESSURE BUILDS

Analysts said the steps were aimed at putting pressure on the South and at attracting the notice of new U.S. President Barack Obama, who is sending Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the region next week to discuss regional security concerns.

"We are hopeful that some of the behavior that we have seen coming from North Korea in the last few weeks is not a precursor of any action that would up the ante or threaten the stability and peace and security of the neighbors in the region," Clinton told reporters in Washington on Tuesday.

The U.S. military stepped up its monitoring of North Korea this week amid concerns of possible missile launches, a U.S. military official said.

The foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan said after meeting in Seoul that North Korea should stop its provocations.

Leader Kim Jong-il has named senior military official Kim Yong-chun as the new defense chief, the North's state media said, replacing a close confidant with another to set him up as one of the unquestioned leader's more powerful aides.

Kim Jong-il, 66, who is suspected of suffering a stroke in August, has no challengers to his leadership, analysts said, but the North has rearranged ministerial posts in the past few months -- changing the alignment of the distant trailing pack of officials who might eventually succeed him.

Exiled Chechen Zakayev Rejects Call To Come Home - Report

MOSCOW (AFP)--Exiled Chechen rebel Akhmed Zakayev has rejected an offer from Chechnya's official leader to return home in safety, a Russian newspaper reported Wednesday.

Zakayev, who fled into exile in London in 2002 after Chechnya's second separatist war of the post-Soviet era, told Moskovsky Komsomolets he had been visited by an aide to Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov and spoke on the aide's mobile phone with a man said to be Kadyrov.

Zakayev rejected the offer to come home and work in his former profession as a theater actor or run the concert hall, saying that a spate of politically linked murders in Russia meant no guarantee of safety could be trusted.

"I don't think such promises are reliable. Kadyrov's own security is in question. A couple of months ago there was an assassination attempt at his home, although this fact was officially denied.

"I doubt any one right now can give a complete security guarantee on the territory of Russia, not only in Chechnya but also in Moscow," said Zakayev.

"Ramzan and many other people are concerned about my work situation but I'm quite satisfied with my current post as prime minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria," said Zakayev, using the name used by Chechen rebel leaders to refer to the territory.

Zakayev's return has long been sought by Kadyrov, who is close to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and has spearheaded reconstruction after the devastating Russian military assault.

However, he insisted in an interview with the Trud newspaper that his invitation to Zakayev was "absolutely sincere" and not a question of "enticing" him back.

Attacks on Afghan government buildings kill 20

By AMIR SHAH and RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writers

KABUL – Eight Taliban gunmen wearing suicide vests attacked three Afghan government buildings Wednesday in a coordinated assault that killed 20 people in the heart of Kabul just ahead of a planned visit from the new U.S. envoy to the region.

The attacks in a city dense with barricades and armed guards underscored the difficulty of fending off the Taliban even with abundant troops and weaponry as the U.S. beefs up its presence.

The assailants sent three text messages to the leader of their terror cell in Pakistan before launching Wednesday's assault, said Amrullah Saleh, chief of Afghanistan's intelligence agency, underlining the links between militants in the two countries.

Five men armed with assault rifles and grenades attacked the Justice Ministry in late morning, shooting at workers and temporarily trapping the minister and scores of others inside, witnesses said. The gunmen appeared to hold the building for about two hours before Afghan security forces regained control about midday, according to an AP reporter on the scene.

At about the same time, two men in suicide vests blew themselves up at the ministry's correction department across town. A third assailant in a suicide vest was shot as he tried to force his way into the Education Ministry, about a half-mile (one kilometer) from the Justice Ministry attack, said Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi.

At least 20 people were killed in the attacks and 57 wounded, said Mohammad Hanif Atmar, the interior minister. All eight attackers died, Azimi said, bringing the total death toll to 28.

Zabiullah Mujaheed, a spokesman for the Taliban, said the attacks were in response to the alleged mistreatment of Taliban prisoners in Afghan government jails.

"We have warned the Afghan government to stop torturing our prisoners," Mujaheed told AP in a phone call from an undisclosed location. "Today we attacked Justice Ministry compounds."

Saleh, the intelligence chief, said officials had intelligence indicating a "spectacular" attack involving multiple suicide bombers was imminent, but said they did not have enough specifics to prevent it.

He compared Wednesday's attacks to the assault on hotels, markets and a train station in Mumbai last November that killed 164 in India. Indian officials have blamed the Mumbai attack on the Pakistani-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Saleh did not offer any more specifics.

Twenty-one suspects were detained, he said.

The incident comes as Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama's newly appointed envoy to the region, is expected imminently in Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan. Obama has vowed to increase U.S. focus on the resurgent Taliban, including sending more troops and designating Holbrooke, who is helping the administration chart a new strategy to beat the insurgencies raging in both countries.

The Taliban regularly use suicide bombings in their assaults on Afghan and foreign troops, but attackers have rarely made it inside the barricaded and guarded compounds of government buildings in the capital.

Justice Minister Sarwar Danesh spoke to the AP while he was briefly trapped inside the ministry with a number of government employees.

"They used grenades and AK-47s," Danesh said of the attackers, speaking by mobile phone.

A ministry worker said he scrambled out of a second-floor window to escape an advancing gunman.

"I came out of my office to see what was going on, and I saw a man with an AK-47 shooting at every employee he saw in the hall," said ministry employee Nazir Mohammad, shaking as he spoke.

Wednesday's attack follows on an assault last month, when a Taliban suicide bomber attacked vehicles on a road that runs by both the German Embassy and a U.S. military base. One U.S. service member and four Afghan civilians died.

Elsewhere, in Logar, one province south of Kabul, a roadside bomb exploded near a French military medical team's convoy, killing one French officer and two Afghans, said Den Mohammad Durwesh, the governor's spokesman. The French government said another soldier was seriously injured.

Also in Logar, a helicopter with the U.S.-backed coalition killed five civilians as it responded to ground fire, Durwesh said. U.S. spokesmen could not immediately be reached for comment.

Mecca monorail deal marks Saudi visit by China's Hu

by Paul Handley

RIYADH (AFP) – China has won a contract to build a monorail near Islam's holiest city of Mecca to ferry pilgrims between key religious sites during the hajj, or annual Muslim pilgrimage, Saudi Arabia announced.

The 1.8 billion dollar deal, finalized during Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Saudi Arabia, is the second rail project in a week involving Mecca to be awarded to a Chinese railway builder.

The latest agreement, underscoring China's growing role as a key contractor for infrastructure in the oil-rich kingdom, was signed late Tuesday by China Railway Corp and Prince Miteb bin Abdulaziz, head of the commission for developing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

On Friday, a consortium including China Railway Engineering won a civil works contract, also worth 1.8 billion dollars, for a 444-kilometer (275-mile) high-speed railway to link Mecca and Medina via Jeddah.

As a dense sandstorm enveloped Riyadh on Wednesday morning, the Chinese leader visited Riyadh Cement company, which has just contracted China's Sinoma International Engineering to expand its production lines.

In the afternoon, Hu was to meet with Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary General Abdulrahman Hamad al-Attiyah to discuss trade liberalization measures, GCC officials said.

The Mecca mass transit deal was one of several announced on Hu's visit, highlighting the growing role of China in Saudi Arabia's plan to undertake 450 billion riyals (120 billion dollars) in major infrastructure, education and new cities projects over the next five years.

On Wednesday the Saudi group ACWA Power International, which builds power and desalinization plants, announced a partnership with Shanghai Electric Power Generation Group to work together on two projects, one inside Saudi Arabia and another in an undisclosed country in the region.

The monorail project will link Mecca with the holy sites of Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifah, which are visited by massive tides of pilgrims during the hajj, the state news agency SPA said.

The project is set to be completed over four years, but will be ready to operate at 35 percent capacity for the hajj of late 2010, SPA said.

According to media reports, the project comprises four elevated tracks intended to carry up to 20,000 passengers an hour.

The Mecca rail link was one of a number of deals signed on Tuesday as Hu and his entourage met with Saudi King Abdullah and leaders of the Saudi government.

"China-Saudi Arabia ties have developed rapidly and reached an all-time high since the heads of states exchanged their visits in 2006," Hu said, according to China's Xinhua news agency.

The two sides also signed an agreement covering cooperation in developing and trade in oil, natural gas, petrochemicals and minerals late Tuesday as China seeks to secure long-term natural resource supplies for its giant economic machine, SPA said.

China is already one of the top buyers of oil from Saudi Arabia, importing 36 million tonnes of Saudi crude in 2008, according to Chinese figures.

Chinese firms are also exploring for new oil deposits inside Saudi Arabia together with the kingdom's state oil company Aramco.

Hu is on the second day of a three-day visit to shore up economic relations and discuss energy supplies with the world's top oil exporter.

He was scheduled to depart Wednesday and travel to Mali, Senegal, Tanzania and Mauritius as part of efforts to strengthen China's relations with the African continent, an important source of minerals and other raw materials for China and a growing market for Chinese exports.

Britain ready to send 300 more troops to help 'surge' in Afghanistan

Britain is preparing to send 300 more troops to Afghanistan, which could mark the extent of its contribution to the US-led “surge”.

Britain will deploy the specialist troops within weeks in a move being seen as an attempt to head off any larger request for British forces from President Obama.

The new US Administration had been expected by some British officials to request a whole battle group of 1,500 troops, and plans had been sketched out by senior military figures to send two 700-strong combat battalions.

Gordon Brown will not want to disappoint the US President over the issue as European heads of state fight it out to become the first to meet him in the White House. As The Times revealed in December, however, the Prime Minister is cautious about committing significant numbers above the 8,300 British troops already taking part in the Nato effort because of the cost and casualties.

Some ministers believe that the 300 troops that Parliament will be told about within weeks will mark the limit of Britain's additional engagement in the region. The troops will be skilled in clearing roadside explosives. The Ministry of Defence says that 80 per cent of British troops killed in Afghanistan are the victims of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The Government says that no final decisions have been made on whether further troops will join the surge. Mr Brown announced that he had already sent an additional 300 before Christmas, which at the time was hoped by some in Government to be enough to avoid a further commitment.

Britain has said repeatedly that other Nato allies should make a bigger contribution to Afghanistan, with John Hutton, the Defense Secretary, reiterating the plea at a conference at the weekend. “Combat forces, that is a most precious contribution right now to that campaign,” he told defense chiefs in Munich. “We kid ourselves if we imagine that other contributions are as important.”

Last week it was reported that Italy would send more troops to Afghanistan, raising the current deployment of 2,000 troops to 2,800. The Italian Government may also drop restrictions on the deployment of its soldiers.

At the same conference David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, admitted that Britain and its Nato allies were stuck in a stalemate with the Taliban.

The US has not yet revealed what its new aims are for Afghanistan. Much effort has been put in by Nato forces in shoring up the presidency of Hamid Karzai and regional governors. However, relations between the Obama Administration and President Karzai are poor. Mr Obama said recently that the Afghan Government was detached from the surrounding communities it was supposed to serve.

Ministers believe that much of the surge could be directed at the mountainous region that borders Pakistan and is believed to harbor al-Qaeda. There are already signs of a build-up of US troops at two bases in southern Afghanistan, they say.

Afghanistan will be one of the foreign policy priorities of the forthcoming Italian presidency of the G8. Rome believes that Nato's credibility is on the line and wants to call an international conference on stability in the region.

It will invite China, India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey to join G8 members in shaping a new strategy and impressing on the Afghans the need to take more responsibility for their security.

Israel's Leprechaun Election

The results of Tuesday's Israeli elections, while apparently clear on the surface, are in reality so tangled and filled with irony and counterpoint that it appears the voting population of the country has been possessed by Irish leprechauns.

On the one hand, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and her centrist Kadima ("Forward") Party eked out a narrow tactical victory as the largest party in the 120-member Knesset, the Israeli parliament, with 28 seats. However, the entire center-left block combined only won 56 or 57 seats, well short of the 61 majority in the Knesset necessary to form a stable government.

Former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud Party was dashed in its hopes to return to its traditional position over the past 32 years as Israel's largest party. It very narrowly fell short, winning a still impressive 27 seats, only one less than Kadima. But the right wing-nationalist bloc in all clearly outstripped the left, winning a total of 63 to 64 seats.

However, this is where the leprechauns and their magical mischief come into play: For the nationalist bloc is not united. The third largest party in the new Knesset will be the rapidly rising right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu bloc of Avigdor Lieberman, which has now surpassed the fading old Labor Party of Defense Minister Ehud Barak. But Lieberman, a former chief of staff to Netanyahu, has made clear he is reluctant to serve under his old boss. And Netanyahu is notoriously proud, insecure and thin-skinned.

"Bibi" made quite clear during the election campaign that he would far prefer to strike a deal with Barak and Labor. But he didn't expect Kadima to do so well and Labor to do so badly. And he didn't expect Lieberman to do so well either.

Lieberman with his talk of amending borders in any deal is far to the right of Netanyahu on security issues. But Netanyahu has a strong alliance with the religious Orthodox Jewish parties and Lieberman is their sworn enemy.

Lieberman, a Russian Jew and relatively recent immigrant to Israel, has the overwhelmingly secular 750,000 Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union over the past 20 years to Israel as his main constituency. And he has promised them to install civil marriage, burial and other secular regulations in Israel to break the hold of the ultra religious parties.

This is where the numerical calculations become mind-numbing. If Netanyahu and Barak make common cause as they want to, between them they will have only 40 seats in the Knesset. The Shas Sephardi -- Oriental Jewish -- party will provide another 11 seats and United Torah Judaism a further five, bringing the Netanyahu-Barak alliance up to 56, along with any free floating tiny parties in the Knesset.

If Livni can cut a deal with Lieberman, then she will have a base of at least 41 seats in the Knesset. The left-wing Meretz party will give her another three seats. And the other left-wing or secular parties about a dozen more. But Livni's total will still be short of the magic 61 unless the tacit support of the United Arab List, Ta'al, puts her just over the top.

If, however, Netanyahu can swallow his pride and Lieberman can resist the temptation to too obviously humiliate his old boss, they can combine for 43 seats. But the religious parties still count for more combined than Yisrael Beiteinu does, and they won't let Lieberman near any levers of power that could reduce their enormous clout over Israeli society.

Expect, therefore, weeks of cut-throat intrigue and bewilderingly opaque deal-making. Only the leprechauns will be laughing.

Israel troops near Lebanon are on full alert, security source says

Beirut - The Israeli army has raised its alert level on the border with Lebanon on the occasion of the first anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughaniyeh, a Lebanese security source in southern Lebanon said Thursday. "Israeli troops were seen heavily patrolling the Lebanese border," the source said.

Mughaniyeh was killed in a car bomb blast in Damascus on February 12, 2008, an attack which Hezbollah blamed on Israel and vowed revenge for.

Mughaniyeh was one of the world's most wanted and elusive terrorists. He was killed nearly 15 years after dropping almost entirely from sight.

The one-time Hezbollah security chief was implicated in attacks that killed hundreds of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, a string of kidnappings of foreigners in Lebanon in that same period, and bombings of Jewish sites in Argentina.

Hezbollah is organizing a huge rally in Beirut's southern suburbs, to mark his death on February 16, during which the movement's secretary general Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is scheduled to speak.

Iraqi security forces ready, lawmaker says

BAGHDAD, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- Iraqi defense officials said security for the Jan. 31 provincial elections suggested national forces were ready to take control from the Americans.

Abbas al-Bayat, a member of the security and defense committee in the Iraqi Parliament, said with Iraqi military divisions and police forces deployed in each province, national security forces were ready to assume responsibility for securing their nation, the Voices of Iraq news agency reported.

"If the U.S. side wants to reduce its forces' deployment period in Iraq from 24 to 16 months, then Iraqi security forces have the full ability to receive the security folders throughout the country," he said.

Defense officials note Iraqi security forces have stepped up their operations throughout the country as U.S. military forces pull back to their bases as part of a bilateral security agreement that replaced the U.N. mandate for multinational forces.

Iraqi military and police forces took charge of major security operations during the Jan. 31 provincial elections, leaving U.S. forces on stand-by as quick reaction units.

The elections were conducted with very few reports of violence.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Emerging_Threats/2009/02/10/Iraqi_security_forces_ready_lawmaker_says/UPI-43921234307695/.

Lunar spacecraft moves closer to launch

GREENBELT, Md., Feb. 11 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was en route Wednesday to the Kennedy Space Center for a scheduled April 24 launch.

The spacecraft was built by engineers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where it recently completed two months of tests in a thermal vacuum chamber, exposed to the extremely high and low temperatures it will experience as it orbits the moon.

The satellite's mission is one of the first steps in NASA's plan to return astronauts to the moon.

"LRO will spend at least one year in a low polar orbit on its primary exploration mission, with the possibility of three more years to collect additional detailed scientific information about the moon and its environment," NASA said.

The orbiter will carry seven instruments to provide scientists with detailed maps of the lunar surface and information as to the moon's lighting conditions, mineralogical composition and natural resources.

Officials said the data will be used to select safe landing sites, determine locations for future lunar outposts and help mitigate radiation dangers to astronauts.

Al-Shabaab, clans fight in central Somalia

MASAGAWAY, Somalia, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- At least four people were slain in fighting between the al-Shabaab group of Somali insurgents and local clan militias Wednesday, witnesses said.

The fighting in the central Somalia town of Masagaway started after the clan militias attacked the town, residents told the Shabelle Media Network. They said the dead didn't include any civilians.

The news agency said the militias wrested control the town from al-Shabaab, which had controlled Masagaway for a year. The fighting had stopped by late Wednesday and the situation appeared calm, Shabelle said.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/02/11/Al-Shabaab_clans_fight_in_central_Somalia/UPI-55101234377360/.

UN official slams Israel for blocking textbooks

UNITED NATIONS: The top U.N. official in Gaza criticized Israel on Monday for blocking the shipment of paper to print textbooks for a new human rights curriculum that will be taught to children in all grades in the Palestinian territory.

Israel also has refused to allow 12 truckloads of notebooks into Gaza as well as plastic sheeting which is turned into plastic bags to distribute food that the U.N. provides to some 900,000 people, John Ging, head of Gaza operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency which helps Palestinian refugees, said in a videoconference with reporters at U.N. headquarters.

He said 60 percent of the textbooks needed in Gaza have not been printed, so children don't have the material they need to study.

Ging said he was "extremely frustrated" at Israel's refusal to allow paper into Gaza, "not least because we have a new human rights curriculum which everybody here is very excited to teach the children."

The human rights courses are modeled on those developed by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, with input from the human rights community in Gaza, he said. They will be taught by specialist human rights teachers in every school, and human rights organizations in Gaza will evaluate the teachers' performance.

"Hopefully when the kids leave our schools, they'll have the clearest understanding of rights, responsibilities and the effective mechanisms to uphold and achieve those rights," Ging said.

"We want these kids to come up with a civilized outlook, with the mindset that is orientated toward peace and tolerance, and we're being obstructed," he said. "Not being allowed to bring in paper to print the human rights textbooks means that there is an obstruction for the teaching of human rights to the children here in Gaza."

Because Israel and Egypt have blockaded Gaza since Hamas gunmen seized control of the territory in June 2007, most Gazans depend on U.N. food and other aid. But Israel controls the key crossing points, and determines the quantity and nature of goods that enter Gaza.

The U.N. halted aid shipments last week after Hamas officials, who control Gaza, took thousands of U.N. blankets, food parcels and tons of rice and flour.

Ging announced Monday that Hamas officials had returned the stolen cargo, and U.N. officials had lifted their freeze.

"The return of every sack of flour and every blanket that was taken is now evidence in my mind of their realization and their seriousness in terms of the assurances that we have received from them that there will be no recurrence," he said.

Ging said all Gaza crossing points will be closed Tuesday because of elections in Israel, so shipments aren't expected to resume until Wednesday.

"There are thousands of tons ... of urgently needed food and other items of supply that the people here need," Ging said.

Israel's refusal to allow many items into Gaza feeds the anger of Palestinians in the territory, he said.

"We are relying on the political level in Israel to change the policies," he said.

UNRWA ran out of plastic on Monday and had to go to the local market to buy some, which is very expensive.

"We have to somehow keep going until sense prevails and they allow us to bring in the plastic pallets to make the plastic bags," he said.

Indonesia hit by powerful earthquake

By IRWAN FIRDAUS, Associated Press Writer

JAKARTA, Indonesia – A powerful earthquake struck off eastern Indonesia early Thursday, briefly triggering fears of a tsunami. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the 7.0-magnitude quake struck at 1:34 a.m. (1734 Wednesday GMT, 2:34 p.m. Wednesday EST) about 195 miles (315 kilometers) from Manado, the northernmost city on Sulawesi island.

It was centered 21 miles (35 kilometers) beneath the ocean floor, the agency said.

Five aftershocks measuring more than magnitude 5 followed, the USGS said on its Web site.

The Indonesian Agency for Meteorology and Geophysics said in mobile phone text messages sent to reporters that the quake had the power to trigger a tsunami, but the warning was lifted about an hour later.

The agency received no reports from the field of injuries or damage, according to Soehardjono, who heads the agency's earthquake section in the capital, Jakarta. Like many Indonesians, Soehardjono goes by one name.

Grace Wakary, who lives in Manado, told The Associated Press she did not feel anything and that there had been no signs of panic in the city.

Indonesia is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

In December 2004, a massive earthquake off the western island of Sumatra triggered a tsunami that battered much of the Indian Ocean coastline and killed more than 230,000 people — more than half of them in Indonesia's Aceh province. A tsunami off Java in 2007 killed nearly 5,000.

Millions of animals dead in Australia fires

By KRISTEN GELINEAU, Associated Press Writer

SYDNEY – Kangaroo corpses lay scattered by the roadsides while wombats that survived the wildfire's onslaught emerged from their underground burrows to find blackened earth and nothing to eat.

Wildlife rescue officials on Wednesday worked frantically to help the animals that made it through Australia's worst-ever wildfires but they said millions of animals likely perished in the inferno.

Scores of kangaroos have been found around roads, where they were overwhelmed by flames and smoke while attempting to flee, said Jon Rowdon, president of the rescue group Wildlife Victoria.

Kangaroos that survived are suffering from burned feet, a result of their territorial behavior. After escaping the initial flames, the creatures — which prefer to stay in one area — likely circled back to their homes, singeing their feet on the smoldering ground.

"It's just horrific," said Neil Morgan, president of the Statewide Wildlife Rescue Emergency Service in Victoria, the state where the raging fires were still burning. "It's disaster all around for humans and animals as well."

Some wombats that hid in their burrows managed to survive the blazes, but those that are not rescued face a slow and certain death as they emerge to find their food supply gone, said Pat O'Brien, president of the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia.

The official human death toll stood at 181 from the weekend's deadly fires and authorities said it would exceed 200. While the scope of the wildlife devastation was still unclear, it was likely to be enormous, Rowdon said.

"There's no doubt across that scale of landscape and given the intensity of the fires, millions of animals would have been killed," he said.

Hundreds of burned, stressed and dehydrated animals — including kangaroos, koalas, lizards and birds — have already arrived at shelters across the scorched region. Rescuers have doled out antibiotics, pain relievers and fluids to the critters in a bid to keep them comfortable, but some of the severely injured were euthanized to spare any more suffering.

"We've got a wallaby joey at the moment that has crispy fried ears because he stuck his head out of his mum's pouch and lost all his whiskers and cooked up his nose," Rowdon said. "They're the ones your hearts really go out to."

In some of the hardest-hit areas, rescuers used vaporizing tents to help creatures whose lungs were burned by the searing heat and smoke.

One furry survivor has emerged a star: a koala, nicknamed "Sam" by her rescuers, was found moving gingerly on scorched paws by a fire patrol on Sunday. Firefighter David Tree offered the animal a bottle of water, which she eagerly accepted, holding Tree's hand as he poured water into her mouth — a moment captured in a photograph seen around the world.

"You all right, buddy?" Tree asks in a video of the encounter as he approaches the koala. Later, as Sam thirstily gulps from the bottle, he quips: "How much can a koala bear?"

Often mistakenly called koala bears because they resemble a child's teddy bear, the marsupial is actually a rather grumpy creature with a loud growl and sharp claws.

Sam is being treated at the Mountain Ash Wildlife Shelter in Rawson, 100 miles (170 kilometers) east of Melbourne, where she has attracted the attention of a male koala, nicknamed "Bob," manager Coleen Wood said. The two have been inseparable, with Bob keeping a protective watch over his new friend, she said.

Meanwhile, workers at the shelter were scrambling to salve the wounds of possums, kangaroos, lizards — "everything and anything," Wood said.

"We had a turtle come through that was just about melted — still alive," Wood said. "The whole thing was just fused together — it was just horrendous. It just goes to show how intense (the fire) was in the area."

The animals arriving appear stressed, but generally seem to understand the veterinarians are trying to help them, Wood said. Kangaroos and koalas are widespread in Australia and are not particularly afraid of humans.

Volunteers from the animal welfare group Victorian Advocates for Animals filled 10 giant bins with 2,300 dead grey-headed flying foxes that succumbed to heat stroke Saturday, said Lawrence Pope, the group's president. Volunteers tried to save some of the bats by giving them fluids and keeping them cool, Pope said, but the creatures were simply too stressed and perished.

"It's heartbreaking," Pope said. "They're very endearing animals and to see them die right before our eyes is something that wildlife rescuers and carers just find appalling."

Military struggles to track Afghans' weapons

By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – The U.S. has been shoveling weapons into the hands of Afghan troops but doesn't have a firm system in place or enough personnel to ensure they don't wind up in the hands of Taliban fighters, according to an independent study.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press, comes as Kabul recovers from a devastating attack Wednesday by heavily armed militants. The fighters stormed three government buildings of the heavily fortified capital, killing 20 people and wounding 57 others.

Afghanistan officials said the eight attackers — armed with Kalashnikov rifles, grenades and explosive vests — died in the assault, bringing the death toll to 28.

In a study to be released on Thursday, the Government Accountability Office found that the U.S. shipped some 242,000 weapons to Afghanistan during a nearly four year period before June 2008. The weapons included rifles, pistols, machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Despite policies to the contrary, the Defense Department did not maintain a complete inventory on more than a third of those weapons, according to the GAO.

Many weapons could not be linked to serial numbers, making it nearly impossible to verify receipt. And of the 41,000 with serial numbers, none could be tied to records confirming their location. The military also would forgo routine inventory checks because of staffing shortages and a lack of direction, GAO concluded.

Similar findings accompanied a review of some 135,000 weapons provided by foreign donors and managed by the U.S. military.

"Lapses in accountability occurred throughout the supply chain," according to the report. Weapons provided by the U.S. military to Afghanistan security forces "are at serious risk of theft or loss."

Rep. John Tierney, who will chair a House hearing Thursday on the issue, called the findings disturbing.

Weapons accountability "serves as an important — and tangible — harbinger of how we've been doing so far with U.S. and international efforts to train-and-equip the Afghan police," Tierney said in his prepared remarks.

Tierney said the findings will help determine whether Congress should try to legislate weapons handling in Afghanistan.

"The challenges here are immense, but this is just too important not to get it right," he said.

In response to the report, the Defense Department said it agreed that it needed more people. The Pentagon also said it has taken steps to try to address the problem, including registering serial numbers of small arms and monitoring the location of a weapon.