Guerrilla blows himself up in southern Philippines

MALUSO (PHILIPPINES), Oct 23: A detained member of a Philippine Muslim guerrilla group linked to Osama Bin Laden today committed suicide by detonating a grenade, the military said.

Bochoy Laja Ordonez, an aide of Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Sabaya, was captured by the military at a market in Maluso on the island of Basilan last Thursday buying medicine, cigarettes and other supplies.

The military said Ordonez led them to a hideout of the Abu Sayyaf in jungle outside the town on Sunday, prompting a heavy clash between the military and the guerrillas.

Military Staff Sergeant Ramile Taule, who guarded Ordonez at a dilapidated school building in Maluso, said the Abu Sayyaf man apparently got hold of a grenade early in the day.

"I went to relieve myself but when I looked back, I saw him holding something under the blanket. I asked ‘what’s that?’ then there was an explosion," Taule, who was himself hit by shrapnel in both legs, told reporters.

He said Ordonez, who was in handcuffs, had probably stolen the grenade.

The military used helicopter gunships and heavy weapons in the clash and officers say they believed the guerrillas suffered heavy losses. But the fighting was in thick jungle and no bodies were found. Only blood.

The guerrillas, who are holding 11 hostages including an American couple kept in captivity for almost five months, have been linked to the Al Qaeda network of Saudi-born Bin Laden.

The United States, which has named Bin Laden as the chief suspect in the September 11 attacks, has sent a team of advisers to the Philippines to help crack down on the Abu Sayyaf.

Today, a five-man military section of the team arrived in Zamboanga, the staging point of military operations in the southern Philippines and went into discussions with local officers.

There has been little fighting in the area since Sunday night, but Army officers said troops were in pursuit of the rebels and believed the hostages were in tow.

Military spokesman General Edilberto Adan said in a radio interview that the military hoped to "drastically reduce the capability" of the Abu Sayyaf by November by capturing their leaders.

"We would have brought down (the Abu Sayyaf problem).. By the end of the month to a police level situation," he said.

The Abu Sayyaf claims to be fighting for a Muslim homeland in the south of the mainly catholic Philippines but appears to concentrate on kidnap for ransom.

The group has two main factions — one operating on Basilan and one on nearby Jolo. Both islands are about 900 km south of Manila.

The Jolo faction kidnapped westerners and other tourists from a Malaysian beach resort last year and according to local media received some 20 million in ransom payments. In fighting on Jolo on Sunday, the military claimed it had killed 18 rebels.

The Basilan faction abducted 20 people, including three Americans, from a resort in the western Philippines on May 27. It has executed one American, and is still holding Gracia and Martin Burnham, a couple who were both working for the US-based new tribes mission.

Many of the Filipino hostages have been released in exchange for ransom and some have been executed. The guerrillas have also kidnapped fresh victims while fleeing troop pursuit on Basilan. (REUTERS)

Israel’s Sharon defies US over West Bank raids

JERUSALEM, Oct 23: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today defied pressure from the United States and his own coalition partners to end Israel’s biggest military offensive against the Palestinian authority.

Sharon brushed off a US demand that Israel immediately withdraw troops deployed in or around most cities in the Palestinian-ruled West Bank after a far-right Israeli Cabinet Minister was assassinated last Wednesday.

The United States is anxious to end over a year of Israeli-Palestinian fighting as it seeks to bolster Arab and Islamic support for its military strikes in Afghanistan.

Yet tensions rose further when Palestinians blamed Israel for the explosion of a booby-trapped car in the West Bank city of nablus on Monday night that killed a Palestinian militant accused of being behind a series of deadly suicide bombings.

"Israel does not plan to take control of (Palestinian-ruled) areas, but the murder of (Tourism) Minister Rehavam Zeevi crossed a red line and Israel, like any democratic country, is fulfilling its right to self-defence," Sharon’s office said in a statement late yesterday.

Gunbattles raged overnight where Israeli forces remained, particularly in Bethlehem where soldiers had taken up positions several hundred metres (yards) inside the city revered as the birthplace of Jesus.

In the West Bank town of Qalqiliya, Israeli tanks and bulldozers raided part of the city overnight, destroying a Palestinian security force installation and the house of a suicide bomber who killed 21 people in Tel Aviv in June.

Palestinian officials said a 13-year-old youth died of wounds inflicted in violence in Qalqiliya yesterday.

At the United Nations, the Palestinian delegate to the UN called for the Security Council to demand Israel withdraw its forces from areas taken in the past five days.

US officials initially reacted to the raid by saying they hoped the military operation would not be lengthy.

But in unusually strong language aimed at one of America’s staunchest allies, Washington ratcheted up its criticism five days into the offensive.

"Israeli defence forces should be withdrawn immediately from all Palestinian-controlled areas and no further such incursions should be made," State Department Spokesman Philip Reeker said in Washington.

Sharon reiterated his demand that the Palestinian authority "hand over Cabinet Minister Zeevi’s murderers and those who sent them, fight terror organisations and dismantle them".

Israeli diplomatic sources said the Army would remain in its current positions to prevent attacks by Palestinian militants amid "severe warnings" of imminent assaults.

Sharon also came under domestic pressure from the centre-left labour party, a key coalition partner, which said it would consider pulling out of his Government if the offensive against the Palestinian authority continued.

But thousands of right-wing Israelis urged Sharon to topple the Palestinian authority and its leader, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, in a rally in Jerusalem last night.

Palestinians say the Israeli Government is already persuing just such a policy, but Israel has denied any such aim.

In its statement, the State Department also called on the Palestinian authority "to do all in its power to halt violence and terror", adding that failure to do so "is absolutely unacceptable".

Arafat said in Gaza he was committed to a law banning the military wings of militant groups, saying: "Anyone who violates the law will be arrested and some of them have been arrested."

Sharon said members of one of the Palestinian security forces helped Zeevi’s killers escape into Palestinian-ruled territory from the Jerusalem hotel where the killing took place. A senior security source said the assassin fled to bethlehem.

Arafat risks triggering internal unrest if he bows to Israel’s demand to hand over Zeevi’s killers, who were avenging an Israeli assassination of a militant leader in August.

That risk increased following the killing of Ayman Halaweh, a "commander" from the militant Islamic group Hamas, when his car exploded in Nablus. Hamas renewed its calls for revenge on Israel.

Israeli officials had no comment on the blast, but Sharon’s office issued a statement saying Halaweh was involved in eight suicide bombings in recent years in which 48 people were killed.

Israeli authorities had described Halaweh as an explosives expert who recruited suicide bombers and rigged the device used in a bombing which killed 21 people, most of them teenagers, at a Tel Aviv Disco in June.

Israel says its tactic of hunting and killing Palestinian militants is in self-defence. Palestinians call it assassination and say Israel has killed over 60 militants under the policy, which has been condemned internationally.

At least 656 Palestinians and 177 Israelis have been killed since the revolt began in September 2000 after peace negotiations stalled. (REUTERS)

South Africa hits out at firms on AIDS drugs

JOHANNESBURG, Oct 23: South Africa has said AIDS drugs were ineffective and produced side-effects almost as bad as the disease itself.

The African National Congress (ANC) Government accused an alliance led by the pharmaceutical industry, and including aids activists and churches, of trying to force it into dispensing harmful antiretroviral drugs.

"Government is resisting pressure to provide to all and sundry highly toxic drugs that offer no hope of eradicating the virus," ANC spokesman Smuts Ngonyama said in a letter sent to the country’s leading business day newspaper.

"It will not be stampeded into taking positions that do not improve the health of our people on a sustainable basis," ngonyama said, referring to US research which highlighted the risks of heart disease and cancer associated with the drugs.

Ngonyama called the side effects "almost as bad as the illness that they are supposed to alleviate".

But the South African drug industry denied that antiretroviral drugs were unsafe.

"All medicines, including antiretrovirals, are registered by drug regulatory bodies around the world as being safe and effective provided they are used as prescribed under medical supervision because it is found that the benefits of those drugs far outweigh any potential side effects," said Mirryena Deeb, Chief Executive of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of South Africa.

South Africa has balked on cost and safety grounds at the nationwide use of antiretroviral AIDS drugs, which slow down the duplication of the virus that leads to full-blown AIDS.

South Africa’s AIDS policy has also attracted a whirlwind of criticism after President Thabo Mbeki questioned the causal link between HIV (Human Immuno-deficiency Virus) and AIDS.

This is despite South Africa having more people living with HIV-AIDS than any other country in the world. Five million people — or one in nine of the population — are estimated to be carrying the deadly disease.

The ANC’s latest attack on the drug industry came weeks after London-based glaxosmithkline granted a licence to South African generic producer Aspen Pharmacare to manufacture its AZT, 3TC and combivir antiretroviral drugs.

But the success of the scheme, which could drastically cut the cost of these drugs to around 15 rand (1.61 dollars) per pill, will hinge on whether the Government offers a state tender to aspen for GSK’s products under licence.

Ngonyama, questioning the motives of the industry, said German pharmaceutical giant boehringer ingelheim had funded an AIDS activist group that was demanding the use of antiretrovirals.

The company has previously denied the allegation.

Pretoria is facing a court challenge by the country’s leading AIDS group, the treatment action campaign, for not allowing the drug nevirapine in state hospitals to reduce the risk of mothers passing the virus to newborns.

A senior health official is being sued in the courts by a six-month-old baby who contracted HIV from her mother, on the grounds that health workers failed in their duty to provide proper care. (REUTERS)

Think anthrax is scary? other agents are worse

WASHINGTON, Oct 23: Americans may be suffering from "anthrax anxiety" now, but attackers who want to wreak biological havoc have a range of other, often more horrifying agents to choose from, experts say.

Smallpox is highly contagious and a particularly horrible disease, botulinum toxin could be sneaked into water supplies and paralyze thousands and plague is easily spread and evokes unpleasant reminders of medieval epidemics.

Bioterrorism and biological warfare experts have for three years been sounding increasingly urgent warnings about the risk of a germ attack and had finally started getting Government funding to increase vaccine doses, stockpile antibiotics and explore various treatments for deadly hemorrhagic fevers.

They had compiled an "A" list of likely germ agents to be used in attacks, topped by anthrax.

Anthrax is considered by military and bioterrorism experts to be the weapon of choice because it is so deadly when inhaled, with up to a 90-per cent death rate it is relatively easy to get hold of the spores are stable and can be dispersed by anything from a letter to a bomb and because the symptoms look harmless until it is almost too late to treat it.

But anthrax is not easy to process into a usable form, is easy to treat with antibiotics and is not contagious.

Lots of other diseases are very contagious, including smallpox. A global vaccination program wiped it out in 1977, but the variola virus that causes smallpox is considered a good germ warfare weapon because it kills 30 percent of its victims, perhaps with a higher rate of fatalities if it is inhaled.

Everyone born before 1972 was vaccinated, but experts say the immunity has probably worn off for most.

"Although smallpox has long been feared as the most devastating of all infectious diseases, its potential for devastation today is far greater than at any previous time," the working group on civilian biodefense, made up of 25 doctors and researchers who have been studying biological warfare for years, said in a report published in the journal of the American Medical Association in February.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says it has 15 million doses of smallpox vaccine — but some experts say the true amount could be as little as half that because the vaccine may have degraded while in storage.

Tests are underway to see if the vaccine stockpile can be stretched by diluting it and work has begun on making a new vaccine. The US Government has said it wants to build up a supply of 300 million doses, just in case.

The vaccine, if given quickly enough after infection, can prevent a patient from becoming mortally ill.

Plague is another infectious disease that bioterrorism experts have been warning about. It infects between 1,000 and 3,000 people around the world every year, including a few in the United States, and also has a more dangerous inhaled form called pneumonic plague.

Spread by fleas carried by rodents, plague is caused by the yersinia pestis bacteria.

The first signs of illness in pneumonic plague are fever, headache and a cough that brings up blood. Untreated, the pneumonia can kill but several antibiotics can stop the infection, including streptomycin and tetracycline.

Like smallpox, plague can be spread from person to person through invisible, infected droplets of saliva.

Tularemia, sometimes called rabbit fever, is another animal disease that occasionally infects people around the world.

Symptoms start within 1 to 10 days after exposure, with a high fever and perhaps a blister if the infection came through the skin. Experts say tularemia bacteria could be spread in an airborne explosion or perhaps by something like a crop duster.

It can kill but antibiotics work against tularemia.

Then there are the hemorrhagic fevers, from the well-known ebola, to argentine hemorrhagic fever, lassa fever, rift valley fever, crimean-congo hemorrhagic fever and tick-borne encephalitis — all caused by viruses.

Patients can bleed under the skin, out of the mouth, eyes and ears, and can die of shock. With the exception of yellow fever and Argentine hemorrhagic fever, no vaccines have been developed against any of the viruses, which are contagious and can be spread by insect bites.

Botulinum toxin, made by the clostridium botulinum bacteria, is perhaps best known these days for its use by plastic surgeons, who inject tiny amounts to freeze muscles in the face and reduce some wrinkles.

But botulism is also a deadly form of food poisoning, causing severe paralysis and death.

Symptoms start after 6 hours to 2 weeks and include double or blurred vision, drooping eyelids, slurred speech and muscle weakness that descends from the shoulders to the legs.

"Botulinum toxin poses a major bioweapon threat because of its extreme potency and lethality, its ease of production, transport and misuse, and the need for prolonged intensive care among affected persons," the working group on civilian Biodefense said.

"Botulinum toxin is the most poisonous substance known. A single gram of crystalline toxin, evenly dispersed and inhaled, would kill more than 1 million people, although technical factors would make such dissemination difficult."

Botulism is not contagious and the cdc has some antitoxin to treat it.

Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo cult tried to use botulinum toxin at least three different times, according to the report. "These attacks failed, apparently because of faulty microbiological technique, deficient aerosol-generating equipment or internal sabotage," the working group said.

The group got the botulinum toxin out of the soil. (REUTERS)

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