QUOTE OF THE DAY
“They fired live bullets directly at us. I am very scared.”
Mak Vin, a 25-year-old garment worker in Cambodia who was among those protesting over wages when police opened fire to break up the demonstration Article, this page
Al-Qaida claims Fallujah as new state
BAGHDAD - Black-clad Sunni militants of al-Qaida destroyed the Fallujah police headquarters and mayor’s office, planted their flag atop other government buildings and decreed the western Iraqi city to be their new independent state Friday in an escalating threat to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose forces were struggling to retake control late into the night.
The advances by the militants - members of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant - came after days of fighting in Fallujah, Ramadi and other areas of Iraq’s Anbar province.
The region is a center of Sunni extremism that has grown more intense in reaction to al-Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad and the neighboring civil war in Syria.
The group’s fighters cut power lines in Fallujah late in the day and ordered residents not to use their backup generators.
Assertions by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant fighters that they were in complete control of Fallujah were disputed by government security forces and an alliance of tribal leaders. By nightfall, the security forces and tribal militia members had recaptured a part of the main street and a municipal building.
Mohamed al-Isawi, the head of the Fallujah police, said he was gathering men in an area north of Fallujah, as a staging ground for what he hoped would be a decisive battle to retake full control of the city.
More of U.S. embassy staff exit S. Sudan
The United States on Friday ordered a further reduction of U.S. Embassy staff in South Sudan and said it would cease to provide consular services for its citizens as of today, even as the country’s warring factions were reported to have opened preliminary, indirect talks in neighboring Ethiopia.
A travel advisory on the website of the State Department said Washington “ordered a further drawdown of U.S. Embassy personnel because of the deteriorating security situation” in South Sudan, which has been seized with conflict between its main political factions since last month.
“We continue to urge U.S. citizens in South Sudan to depart the country,” the message said, offering evacuation flights Friday on a “first-come, first-served basis.”
After three weeks of fighting between forces loyal to the government of President Salva Kiir and rebels aligned with the former vice president, Riek Machar, efforts have been underway for days to convene peace talks in Ethiopia.
The fighting has driven an estimated 180,000 people from their homes, forcing them to seek sanctuary at more than a dozen U.N. compounds across the country.
The United States began evacuating U.S. citizens and sent 45 U.S. soldiers to protect the embassy as the fighting spread in December.
Rescue’s Chinese icebreaker in hot water
BEIJING - One day after a Chinese icebreaker played a central role in the rescue of 52 passengers from an icebound research vessel in Antarctica, crew members on the Chinese ship said it might itself become trapped by ice, Australian officials said Friday.
A helicopter from the Chinese vessel, the Snow Dragon, was part of an operation Thursday to pluck the passengers from a makeshift landing zone on the ice near the Russian research ship that had been lodged in ice for more than a week.
On Friday, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which has been managing the rescue, said it had been told by the crew of the Snow Dragon that the vessel could become icebound. The Aurora Australis, an Australian icebreaker, was placed on standby to help.
C. African Republic’s refugees double
GENEVA - The number of people displaced by fighting between Muslim and Christian militias and vigilantes in the Central African Republic has more than doubled in the past month, and increasing violence is making it harder to deliver humanitarian relief, the United Nations warned Friday.
More than 935,000 people have been driven from their homes in the clashes between Christian militias and the mainly Muslim Seleka rebel group that overthrew President Francois Bozize in March, up from around 400,000 at the start of December, said Babar Baloch, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency. In the past month, relief supplies have reached about 23,000 people, he said.
A month after France dispatched additional troops to the Central African Republic to join African peacekeepers trying to restore stability, the violence is getting worse, “making the delivery of humanitarian relief ever more difficult,” Baloch said.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 01/04/2014