Israel seeks to create buffer zone in Gaza
Jerusalem Frustrated by continuing rocket fire from Palestinian militants, Israel moved Wednesday to carve out a buffer zone in the northern Gaza Strip, firing a barrage of artillery shells and dropping leaflets that warned Palestinian residents to stay clear.
The escalating confrontation represented the latest setback to peace hopes in the wake of Israel’s landmark withdrawal of troops and Jewish settlers from Gaza over the summer.
As darkness fell Wednesday, the boom of Israeli artillery fire echoed across the farming fields and shantytowns of northern Gaza. A short time earlier, homemade rockets fired by Palestinian militants landed inside Israel. No casualties were immediately reported on either side.
Israeli politicians and military leaders said they hope to avoid an Israeli ground offensive in Gaza, but emphasized that Palestinian rocket fire – even that involving homemade projectiles that rarely inflict casualties or cause serious damage – will not be tolerated.
Palestinians condemned what they called a bid to reassert Israeli control over the impoverished coastal territory, which is home to more than 1.3 million Palestinians.
German diplomat likely kidnapped in Yemen
San’a, Yemen A former German ambassador to Washington and four members of his family were reported missing and apparently kidnapped Wednesday while vacationing in a remote part of Yemen. It was the latest in a string of tourist abductions in the Arabian desert.
Juergen Chrobog, ambassador from 1995 to 2001, his wife and three adult sons were declared missing by the German Foreign Ministry. In Yemen, government officials said the family had been taken hostage by tribesmen who regularly seize Western tourists as bargaining chips in dealings with the government, according to wire reports from San’a, the capital.
Chrobog, 65, served as Germany’s deputy foreign minister until last month, when a new government came to power. In 2003, he played an instrumental role in winning the release of 14 European hostages – nine of them Germans – who had been kidnapped in the Sahara desert and held for six months by Islamic radicals.
Airline officials blame crash on instruments
Baku, Azerbaijan The crash of an Azerbaijani airliner that killed 23 people was caused by flight instrument failure, leaving the crew unable to pilot the aircraft, airline officials said Wednesday.
The Ukrainian-built An-140 plane operated by state-run Azerbaijani Airlines crashed on land near the Caspian Sea shore just north of the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, minutes after takeoff late Friday during a flight to Kazakhstan. All 18 passengers and five crew were killed.
Azerbaijan Airlines’ chief Jahangir Askerov said that the study of the plane’s flight recorders revealed that the pilots’ instruments failed immediately after takeoff, making the crew unable to see the plane’s position in the air.
But the head of the Ukrainian company that built the plane, Pavel Naumenko, disputed the claim that the instruments failed, telling reporters at the same news conference that the plane had three horizon indicators and each of them had a backup energy source. That, Naumenko said, would make the instruments’ simultaneous failure “all but impossible.”