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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Saudi Crown Prince Sultan laid to rest


Sultan's body, swathed in a brown cloth, was carried through the throng of mourners on a bier amid the flashes of cameras in the sprawling Imam Turki bin Abdullah mosque in Riyadh for funeral prayers before burial. The funeral of Saudi Arabia s Crown Prince Sultan set the stage for King Abdullah to name a new heir, widely expected to be veteran Interior Minister Prince Nayef, a move that would emphasise stability in the world s top oil-exporting country. At stake in the transition is the direction of a major U.S. ally with an ageing leadership trying to reconcile its conservative traditions with the needs of a modern economy and a young, increasingly outward-looking population. "In the political system this is an important event, but the system is designed to ensure continuity," said Jarmo Kotilaine, Chief Economist at National Commercial Bank in Jeddah. "Economic policy is put in place over a much longer period and is not likely to change at all." In his six-year-old reign, King Abdullah has pushed changes aimed at creating jobs by liberalising markets and loosening the grip of religious hardliners over education and social policy. The death of Crown Prince Sultan, who was also defence minister, might also lead to a wider cabinet reshuffle. Saudi Arabia, which dominates world oil markets and holds profound influence over Muslims through its guardianship of Islam s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina, faces turbulence in its neighbours and a confrontation with regional rival Iran.

Turkish quake survivors camp out, death toll 279


Tens of thousands of people spent a second night under canvas, in cars or huddled round small fires in towns rattled by aftershocks from a massive earthquake in eastern Turkey that killed hundreds. Early on Tuesday (October 25) the death toll from Sunday s quake stood at 279 and hundreds more were still missing. Quake survivors struggled to free relatives known to be trapped. "It was very cold inside the tents and despite all that, I pulled out one of my brothers and one of my nieces from under rubble," said one man, standing outside rows of tents bearing the Turkish Red Crescent symbol at an encampment in the town of Ercis. Casualties were concentrated, so far, in Ercis and the provincial capital Van, with officials still checking outlying areas. Seven people were rescued overnight, broadcaster CNN Turk reported. As grieving families prepared on Tuesday to bury their dead, others kept vigil by the mounds of concrete rubble and masonry, praying rescue teams would find missing loved ones alive. The Disaster and Emergency Administration said 1,301 people had been injured and 2,262 buildings had collapsed. Rescue teams concentrated efforts in Ercis, a town of 100,000 that was worst hit by the 7.2 magnitude tremor. The Turkish Red Crescent distributed up to 13,000 tents, and was preparing to provide temporary shelter for about 40,000 people, although there were no reliable estimates of the number of people left destitute. The relief agency was criticised for failing to ensure that some of the most needy, particularly in villages, received tents as temperatures plummeted overnight. Other survivors lamented the lack of facilities in the emergency encampments. "We spent the night under freezing temperature. We shivered all night long, nobody provided us any blankets or heaters, we don t even have a toilet. People are getting sick. It is very dirty here," said a women who spent the night in a tent in Ercis. Whatever the shortcomings of the relief operation, the disaster posed little risk to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who secured a third consecutive term with a strong majority at a national election in June. The trauma of the quake is one more problem to bear for Kurds, the dominant ethnic group in southeast Turkey, where more than 40,000 people have been killed in a three-decade-long separatist insurgency. The centre of Van, a city of 1 million people, resembled a ghost town with no lights in the streets or buildings. Hardly any people could be seen. The sense of dislocation was greater in Ercis. With no homes to return to, thousands of people, mostly men, paced the streets, stopping to look at the destruction or whenever there was some commotion at a rescue operation site.

Gaddafi buried in unknown place in desert

Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was buried early Tuesday morning in a secret location in desert, Al-Jazeera television reported, quoting officials of the ruling Libyan National Transitional Council. Muammar Gaddafi's body has been buried in secret after being displayed in public, in an ignominious end for Libya's longtime ruler.The last top figures of his ousted regime, Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam and former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, meanwhile, were poised to cross the border into Niger. A Misrata military council member said Gaddafi was buried on Monday night in a religious ceremony, along with another of his sons, Mutassim and former defence minister Abu Bakr Yunis Jaber. Saif al-Islam was "near the Niger border, he hasn't entered Niger yet but he's close", a local official from the northern Niger Agadez region said.  The bodies had been put on display in a market freezer on the outskirts of Misrata, with thousands of Libyans queuing up since Friday to view and photograph them. According to guards at the entrance to the market, a convoy of four or five military vehicles took the bodies away to an unknown location, being kept secret to avoid the site turning into a rallying point for Gaddafi supporters. Three Muslim religious figures loyal to the ousted dictator prayed and performed a religious ceremony before the burial, according to the military council member. The overnight burials come amid raging controversy over the circumstances of Gaddafi's death after he was taken alive last Thursday during the fall of his hometown Sirte, the last hold out after an eight-month armed revolt.