The Hindu : Arrest leads to clashes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 14, 2003

International

International

Arrest leads to clashes

BELGRADE (Serbia-Montenegro): Dozens of riot police and hardline nationalists were injured early on Friday in street battles over the arrest of a fugitive Serb war crimes suspect. Veselin Sljivancanin (in the picture) was arrested after a 10-hour police siege of his apartment building in suburban Belgrade, a statement from Serbia's Interior Ministry said. Shortly after midnight, he was taken to the city's central prison. Col. Sljivancanin was indicted in 1995 by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, to stand trial for alleged crimes committed during the 1991 rebellion by ethnic Serbs in Croatia, which was fighting to break away from Yugoslavia. In the hours before his arrest, nearly 1,000 of Col. Sljivancanin's supporters gathered near his apartment building and threw burning tyres, stones, bricks, beer bottles and other missiles at the police. The police responded by lobbing stun grenades, firing rubber bullets and covering the area with thick clouds of tear gas. After calling in reinforcements, the police charged the protesters to keep them from entering the building. At least 30 protesters and more than 50 policemen were injured in the operation, three of them seriously, Serbia's Interior Minister, Dusan Mihajlovic, said. — AP

Explosives found on plane

ANCONE (ITALY): A package containing explosives was discovered aboard an Alitalia airliner as it prepared to take off from Ancone, on the Adriatic coast, for Rome, Italian air transport police said. The suspect package, found to contain electrical wires and an explosive substance, was blown up on Thursday in a controlled blast after having been discovered in a life jacket under a seat of the plane. An anonymous telephone caller had alerted police about the device. All airport security measures were activated but other flights were not affected. The passengers aboard the Italian flag-carrier Alitalia's plane, on which the explosives were found, were transferred to another flight. Last December there was a similar incident at the same airport. The man who planted that device managed to board a flight from Rome to South America, and is still sought by Interpol. — AFP

400 killed in Liberia fighting

MONROVIA: Up to 400 people have died in recent fighting between Liberian Government forces and rebels in and around the capital city of Monrovia, the Health Minister, Peter Coleman, said on Friday. ``Between 300 and 400, most probably 400, lives have been claimed by the latest fighting, including civilians, Government soldiers and attackers,'' he said. A humanitarian crisis looms over Monrovia where up to one million people are living rough, according to aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors without Borders). MSF workers say up to 25,000 people could be holed up in Monrovia's 35,000-seat auditorium where only 16 toilets are functional (in the picture, a refugee, carried in a trolley, arrives in Monrovia on Thursday). — AFP

Concorde finds new home

WASHINGTON: After 30 years of flying passengers at twice the speed of sound, the Concorde is joining the Wright flyer, Charles Lindbergh's "Spirit of St. Louis," and other aviation treasures at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington. An Air France Concorde roared into Dulles airport in suburban Virginia on Thursday and headed for its new home at the museum's companion facility adjacent to the airport. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Centre opens in December. The French airline officially retired its Concorde fleet in May, while British Airways — the only other airline that offers supersonic flights — will end its service in October. Although Concordes fly at 2,100 kmph and can make a trans-Atlantic trip in three hours, the demand for Concorde service has fallen in recent years while the cost of operating the fleet has risen sharply. — Reuters

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