Myanmar says jets used against Kachin rebels

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military has used jets to attacks rebel fighters in northern Kachin state, the government said on Thursday, its first admission of an intensification of a conflict that has raised doubts about its reformist credentials.

Rebel sources have reported aerial bombings, shelling and even the use of chemical weapons since December 28 after the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) ignored an ultimatum to stop blocking an army supply route in the hilly, resource-rich state where more than 50,000 people have been displaced.

Official newspapers said that air support was used on December 30 to thwart KIA fighters who had occupied a hill and were attacking logistics units of the Tatmadaw, as Myanmar's military is known.

"The Tatmadaw troops cleared Point-771 hill and its surrounding areas where the KIA troops were attacking the Tatmadaw logistic troops," the New Light of Myanmar, a government mouthpiece, said. "The air cover was used in the attack."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced concern on Wednesday over reports of helicopters and fighter jets being used in the state bordering China. The KIA said the attacks were intended to clear the path for an assault on its headquarters in Laisa.

Ban called on Myanmar's government to "desist from any action that could endanger the lives of civilians" and reiterated demands for humanitarian aid groups to be granted access, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said in a statement.

President Thein Sein's quasi-civilian administration insists it wants a ceasefire and political dialogue. It says troops have acted only in self-defense and on Thursday denied having plans to seize the KIA's stronghold.

DOMINANT MILITARY

The escalation of fighting has raised doubts about the sincerity of the reformist ex-generals running the government and the extent of their power in a country the size of Britain and France plagued by decades of internal conflict.

Some analysts and diplomats say central government is either not fully committed to peace with the KIA or unable to assert control over the military, which still dominates politics and the economy despite formally ceding power in March 2011.

Colonel James Lum Dau, a Thai-based spokesman for the KIA's political wing, said Kachin officials on the ground had reported up to 300 people killed in air strikes.

"We are in a defensive position. Right now more people are suffering not only bombings, but shelling and spraying of chemical weapons with helicopter gunships and jets," he said. "Only god knows what to do. We are praying."

It is difficult for journalists to independently verify accounts from the two sides.

Fighting erupted in Kachin in June 2010, ending a 17-year truce, and has continued even as government negotiators have agreed ceasefires elsewhere with ethnic Shan, Chin, Mon and Karen militias after decades of fighting in border areas.

Mistrust runs deep between the military and the KIA, which was once backed by China, and multiple rounds of talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire have gone nowhere. Analysts say a history of bad blood and a battle for control of resources, including highly lucrative jade, could be stoking the unrest.

Zaw Htay, a senior official in Thein Sein's office, told Reuters no air strikes had taken place but K-8 trainer jets had provided cover fire to protect ground troops from rebel attacks. The military, he said, had no intention of seizing the KIA's headquarters.

"The president has said this and at the same time he has invited KIA leaders to come and talk with him in Naypyitaw, but they still haven't responded," Zaw Htay said.

(Additional reporting by Paul Carsten in Bangkok; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Alan Raybould)

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Syria rebels in push to capture air base

AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - Rebels battled on Thursday to seize an air base in northern Syria, part of a campaign to fight back against the air power that has given President Bashar al-Assad's forces free rein to bomb rebel-held towns.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in the 21-month-old uprising and civil war, the United Nations said this week, sharply raising the death toll estimate in a conflict that shows no sign of ending.

After dramatic advances over the second half of 2012, the rebels now hold wide swathes of territory in the north and east, but are limited in exerting control because they cannot protect towns and villages from Assad's helicopters and jets.

Hundreds of fighters from rebel groups were attempting to storm the Taftanaz air base, near the northern highway that links Syria's two main cities, Aleppo and the capital Damascus.

Rebels have been besieging air bases across the north in recent weeks, in the hope this will reduce the government's power to carry out air strikes and resupply loyalist-held areas.

A rebel fighter speaking from near the Taftanaz base overnight said the base's main sections were still in loyalist hands but insurgents had managed to infiltrate and destroy a helicopter and a fighter jet on the ground.

The northern rebel Idlib Coordination Committee said the rebels had detonated a car bomb inside the base.

The government's SANA news agency said the base had not fallen and that the military had "strongly confronted an attempt by the terrorists to attack the airport from several axes, inflicting heavy losses among them and destroying their weapons and munitions".

Rami Abdulrahman, head of the opposition-aligned Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the conflict from Britain, said as many as 800 fighters were involved in the assault, including Islamists from Jabhat al-Nusra, a powerful group that Washington considers terrorists.

Taftanaz is mainly a helicopter base, used for missions to resupply army positions in the north, many of which are cut off by road because of rebel gains, as well as for dropping crude "barrel bombs" of explosives on rebel-controlled areas.

"WHAT IS THE FAULT OF THE CHILDREN?"

Near Minakh, another northern air base that rebels have surrounded, government forces have retaliated by regularly shelling and bombing nearby towns.

In the town of Azaz, where the bombardment has become a near nightly occurrence, shells hit a family house overnight. Zeinab Hammadi said her two wounded daughters, aged 10 and 12, had been rushed across the border to Turkey, one with her brain exposed.

"We were sleeping and it just landed on us in the blink of an eye," she said, weeping as she surveyed the damage.

Family members tried to salvage possessions from the wreckage, men lifting out furniture and children carrying out their belongings in tubs.

"He (Assad) wants revenge against the people," said Abu Hassan, 33, working at a garage near the destroyed house. "What is the fault of the children? Are they the ones fighting?"

Opposition activists said warplanes struck a residential building in another rebel-held northern town, Hayyan, killing at least eight civilians.

Video footage showed men carrying dismembered bodies of children and dozens of people searching for victims in the rubble of the destroyed building, shouting "God is greatest". The provenance of the video could not be independently confirmed.

In addition to their tenuous grip on the north, the rebels also hold a crescent of suburbs on the edge of Damascus, which have come under bombardment by government forces that control the center of the capital.

On Wednesday, according to opposition activists, dozens of people were incinerated in an inferno caused by an air strike on a petrol station in a Damascus suburb where residents were lining up for precious fuel.

The civil war in Syria has become the longest and bloodiest of the conflicts that rose out of uprisings across the Arab world in the past two years.

Assad's family has ruled for 42 years since his father seized power in a coup. The war pits rebels, mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority, against a government supported by members of Assad's Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority sect and some members of other minorities who fear revenge if he falls.

The West, most Sunni-ruled Arab states and Turkey have called for Assad to leave power. He is supported by Russia and Shi'ite Iran.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman and Dominic Evans in Beirut; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

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Indian rape accused charged; victim's father calls for hanging

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Five Indian men were formally charged in court on Thursday with the gang rape and murder of a physiotherapy student in a case that has generated widespread anger about the government's inability to prevent violence against women.

The December 16 attack on the 23-year-old student and a male companion provoked furious protests close to the seat of government in New Delhi and has fuelled a nationwide debate about the prevalence of sexual crime in India, where a rape is reported on average every 20 minutes.

The woman died of her injuries in hospital in Singapore, where she had been taken for treatment, on Saturday.

The five are accused of assaulting the woman on a bus in New Delhi, leaving her with such severe injuries that she died two weeks later. They were not present in court.

A sixth accused is under 18 and is due to be tried separately in a juvenile court.

A public prosecutor read out charges including murder, gang rape and criminal conspiracy. The court will examine the charges on Saturday, duty magistrate Surya Malik Grover said.

Murder carries the death penalty in India.

The father of the woman said earlier he backed the chorus of calls for those responsible to be executed.

"The whole country is demanding that these monsters be hanged. I am with them," the father told reporters in his home village of Mandwara Kalan in Uttar Pradesh state. The woman was born in the village but the family later moved to New Delhi.

She has not been identified and nor have members of her family, in accordance with Indian law.

In a sign of the depth of feeling surrounding the case, the bar association at the court said none of its members was willing to represent the accused. The court is expected to assign a defense lawyer for the men.

Advocates dressed in black robes protesting outside the court called for fast justice. In the northern state of Kashmir, school girls marched with black ribbons over their mouths and demanded harsh punishment for the accused.

The case is due to be processed by a new, fast-track chamber set up in response to the crime.

While the fast-track procedure has broad support, many lawyers worry new that legislation written in haste could be unconstitutional and oppose introducing the death penalty for rape.

"A swift trial should not be at the cost of a fair trial," Chief Justice Altamas Kabir said on Wednesday.

ANGER

Police have said the accused have admitted to torturing and raping the student "to teach her a lesson". She fought back and bit three of them, a police source told Reuters, and the bite marks are part of the evidence against them.

After throwing her from the private bus, the driver tried to run the victim over but she was pulled away by her companion, a senior police official told Reuters.

Police have prepared a dossier of evidence and charges against the accused, which is believed to run to 1,000 pages, including testimony from the woman's friend who survived the hour-long attack and a man who said he was robbed by the same gang prior to the rape.

Days of protests in New Delhi and other cities followed the attack. Many of the protesters have been students, infuriated by what they see as the failure of the government to protect women.

In the northeastern state of Assam on Wednesday, village women beat a politician and handed him to police for what they said was the attempted rape of a woman, police said. Anti-rape protests have also broken out in neighboring Nepal.

The government has set up two panels headed by retired judges to recommend measures to ensure women's safety. One of the panels, due to make recommendations this month, has received some 17,000 suggestions from the public, media reported.

India's chief justice inaugurated the first fast-track court for sexual offences on Wednesday - a long standing demand of activists to clear a court backlog.

A review of India's penal code, which dates back to 1860, was presented to parliament last month, before the attack, and widens the definition of rape, another demand of activists.

That bill is now likely to be revised further, with chemical castration and the death penalty in rape cases among proposals under consideration.

"We want the laws to be amended in such a stringent way that before a person even thinks of touching a girl, he should feel chills down his spine," said lawyer Suman Lata Katiyal, protesting at the south Delhi courthouse.

Hanging is only allowed in the "rarest of rare" cases according to a 1983 Supreme Court ruling. It was used for the first time in eight years in November when the lone surviving gunman from a 2008 militant attack on Mumbai, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab from Pakistan, was executed.

(Additional reporting by Diksha Madhok, Annie Banerji and Satarupa Bhatgtacharjya in NEW DELHI; and Gopal Sharma in KATHMANDU; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Central African Republic president refuses to leave power, defying rebels

BANGUI (Reuters) - Central African Republic President Francois Bozize will refuse to leave power during talks with rebels, his spokesman said on Thursday, rejecting the insurgents' main demand and raising the prospect of a return to fighting.

The Seleka rebel alliance, which has accused Bozize of reneging on a past peace deal, advanced to within striking distance of the mineral-rich nation's capital this week before bowing to international pressure to start negotiations.

A week before those talks were due to start, a spokesman for Bozize's ruling KNK party said the president's departure would not be on the agenda.

"The question of President Bozize leaving ... will be rejected systematically if it is proposed," Cyriac Gonda told Reuters.

"For us, the solution is to form a unity government with everyone," he added, reiterating a previous offer by Bozize to give government posts to the rebels.

The spokesman for the CPSK, one of the rebel groups that form Seleka, said on Thursday a peace deal would not be possible without Bozize's unconditional exit.

The advance by Seleka, an alliance of five armed groups, was the latest in a series of revolts in a country at the heart of one of Africa's most turbulent regions.

CAR remains plagued by poverty and underdevelopment despite its reserves of diamonds, gold and other minerals.

French nuclear energy group Areva mines the country's Bakouma uranium deposit - France's biggest commercial interest in its former colony.

REGIONAL SUPPORT

Seleka fighters have swept aside regionally-backed government defenses to within 75 km (45 miles) of Bangui since launching their assault on December 10.

African leaders are organizing peace negotiations in Gabon's capital Libreville that are expected to take place on January 10. The United States, France and the European Union have urged both sides to reach a political solution and spare civilians.

Martin Ziguele, a former prime minister and now a leading opposition figure in CAR, said on Thursday Bozize's departure should be considered during the Libreville talks.

"There will be no taboo subjects in Libreville, all options will be on the table," he said.

Bozize came to power in a Chadian-backed rebellion in 2003 and has since relied on foreign military help to fend off a series of smaller insurgencies. He won elections in 2005 and 2011 despite opposition complaints of fraud.

Regional leaders have supplied Bozize with hundreds of troops - mostly from Chad but also from Congo, Gabon and Cameroon - to shore up the CAR army.

France, which used air strikes to defend Bozize in 2006, refused Bozize's request for military help this time. Paris has 600 troops in the country to defend about 1,200 of its citizens living there.

Residents in the crumbling riverside capital Bangui said they were relieved that peace talks would take place - putting off a widely-feared rebel assault on the city - but were worried the negotiations would ultimately fail.

"It will bring back the war if people try to force (Bozize) to leave," said Pati Bozo, a pensioner. "Bozize was elected ... This is the point that will bring problems."

Central African Republic is one of a number of countries in the region where U.S. Special Forces are helping local soldiers track down the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group which has killed thousands of civilians across four nations.

(Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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Suicide car bomber kills 20 Shi'ite pilgrims in Iraq

HILLA, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide bomber driving a car killed at least 20 Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims at a bus station in the Iraqi town of Mussayab on Thursday, during the peak of a Shi'ite religious rite, police and medics said.

The attack underlines sectarian tensions that threaten to further destabilize the country a year after U.S. troops left.

Police said the bomber drove into a busy station where pilgrims were gathering to return to Baghdad and the northern provinces on their way back from the holy city of Kerbala, where thousands of Shi'ites make an annual pilgrimage for the Arbain rite.

Mussayab is located some 60 km (40 miles) south of the capital Baghdad.

"I was getting a sandwich when a very strong explosion rocked the place and the blast threw me away. When I regained my senses and stood up, I saw dozens of bodies, said Ali Sabbar, a pilgrim who witnessed the explosion.

"Many cars were set on fire. I just left the place and didn't even participate in the evacuation of the victims".

Arbain has been a frequent target for militants since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, who banned Shi'ite festivals.

The latest violence followed nearly two week of protests against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by thousands of people from the minority Sunni community in the western province of Anbar.

Although violence is far lower than during the sectarian slaughter of 2006-2007, a total of 4,471 civilians died last year in what one rights group described as a "low-level war" with insurgents.

(Reporting by Ali al-Rubaie; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Jason Webb)

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Congo rebels demand government ceasefire before talks

BUNAGANA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Congolese rebels will attend peace talks with the government this week but will walk away if Kinshasa does not sign a ceasefire, the rebel political chief said on Thursday.

Efforts last month to end the nine-month rebellion in Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) volatile east failed when both sides talked war instead of an end to the crisis.

Foreign powers believe the rebels are backed by neighboring Rwanda and fear the conflict could spread and spark another regional war.

The rebel March 23 Movement (M23), named after a 2009 peace deal for eastern Congo that fell apart, questions the commitment of President Joseph Kabila's government to the peace process.

Jean-Marie Runiga, head of the rebel political wing, said government troops were reinforcing positions in the east and warned that M23 would defend itself against any offensive.

The talks are due to take place on Friday in Kampala, the capital of regional mediator Uganda.

"If Kinshasa continues to refuse to sign a ceasefire, M23 is going to ask its delegation to return to DRC. We will wait and when they say 'we're ready to sign (a ceasefire) we'll go back'," Runiga told reporters in Bunagana, a border town under rebel control.

Nestled in lush green hills less than a kilometer from the Ugandan frontier, Bunagana fell into rebel hands last July after government soldiers fled.

Negotiations began last month after regional leaders secured a rebel pull-out from the city of Goma in Congo's eastern North Kivu province.

The talks quickly stalled in a climate of deep mistrust. Uganda, alongside Rwanda, is accused by a group of U.N. experts of supporting the rebel campaign.

But the frontlines have been quiet since the rebels left Goma.

"WE NEED ENCOURAGEMENT"

Successive cross-border conflicts have killed and uprooted millions in the Congo basin since the colonial era, driven by political and ethnic divisions and competition for vast mineral resources.

At first, M23 said it had taken up arms because the Kinshasa government had failed to keep the 2009 peace deal, under which the rebel fighters were integrated into the national army. It later broadened its goals to include the "liberation" of all of Congo and the ousting of President Kabila.

M23 is led by Bosco Ntaganda, a Tutsi warlord indicted by the International Criminal Court. This week the United Nations blacklisted M23 along with another Congolese rebel group.

"We need encouragement from the U.N., not sanctions," said Runiga, dressed in a sharp suit and flanked by fighters clad in crisp fatigues and brandishing automatic rifles.

The other group hit with U.N. sanctions was the FDLR, or Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda. The FDLR is a Rwandan Hutu group that opposes Rwandan President Paul Kagame's Tutsi-led government and includes militiamen suspected of participating in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

One M23 commander, Bertrand Bisimwa, said Congo's government had air-dropped FDLR fighters to reinforce army positions near Goma last month.

Officials from the government in Kinshasa were not immediately available for comment.

The United Nations peacekeeping force in Congo, MONUSCO, rejected talk that the number of FDLR fighters had swollen to several thousand.

MONUSCO said on Wednesday that the group had "no more than a few hundred" fighters in the region and dismissed claims that weapons and munitions were being supplied to the FDLR.

(Additional reporting and writing by Richard Lough in Nairobi; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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Benghazi police captain seized by militia

Benghazi, Libya (Reuters) - The head of Benghazi's criminal investigation police unit is missing after he was seized by armed men, police officials said on Thursday.

Captain Abdel-Salam al-Mahdawi was taken by a unknown suspects late on Wednesday night, officials said .

"He was taken by force under the threat of weapons from a location close to the criminal investigation police offices," said one police official who declined to be named, because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Benghazi, cradle of the armed uprising which saw the end of Muammar Gaddafi's rule in Libya, has been plagued by poor security and assassinations of police and military by militias.

A body charred by hydrochloric acid was found in the city's Buhmeida district, Benghazi police chief Mustafa al-Regayig told state radio. It has not been identified yet, he said.

"We can't confirm or deny that the body is of Captain al-Mahdawi at this time," he said.

Police officials told Reuters Mahdawi had been ready to name suspects over the murder of a former Benghazi police chief.

Faraj al-Deirsy was shot to death in front of his home in November, police and interior ministry sources said at the time.

The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in September.

Police investigators and legal experts have avoided taking on that case because they say they have not been guaranteed protection from groups they believe carried out the attack.

(Reporting By Ghaith Shennib; Writing By Hadeel Al-Shalchi; Editing by Jason Webb)

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Britain extradites al Qaeda suspect to U.S.

LONDON (Reuters) - A Pakistani man accused by British authorities of being an al Qaeda operative who took part in a plot to bomb U.S. and English targets was extradited from Britain to the United States on Thursday to face terrorism charges.

Abid Naseer, 26, was one of a dozen men arrested in April 2009 on suspicion of preparing to cause mass casualties by bombing Manchester city centre in northern England.

He and the other suspects were never charged, but Britain said in addition to the alleged Manchester plot, Naseer was part of a wider al Qaeda cell bent on staging attacks in the United States and Norway.

On Thursday, he was taken by counter-terrorism police from a high security prison in east London to Luton airport, north of the British capital, and handed over to U.S. officials.

He is wanted for trial in the United States for his alleged role in planned suicide bomb attacks on New York City subways in 2009, for which a number of men have already been convicted.

He faces three charges: providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization; conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization; and conspiracy to use a destructive device.

Naseer and 11 others, mostly students from Pakistan, were arrested in daylight raids in 2009 after Britain's most senior counter-terrorism officer was photographed openly carrying details about the operation.

Britain's then-prime minister, Gordon Brown said officers were dealing with a "very big terrorist plot", but no explosives were found and all the men were later released as there was not enough evidence to charge them.

Britain's case against them had been based around emails exchanged between Naseer and a Pakistan account believed to be registered to an al Qaeda operative.

British authorities said the emails, which appeared to be discussions about girlfriends and wedding plans, in fact related to ingredients for explosives and they said Naseer posed a serious threat to national security.

The men were ordered to be deported to Pakistan but Naseer won an appeal against the decision because of fears he would be mistreated if he was returned.

He was arrested again in July 2010 when the U.S. warrant was issued, and last month European Court of Human Rights rejected his appeal against the extradition.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Alison Williams)

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Italian marines to return to India after Christmas leave

ROME (Reuters) - Two Italian marines facing a murder trial in India for killing two fishermen returned there on Thursday after being allowed to spend Christmas in Italy, Rome airport officials said.

While in Italy, they were invited to the presidential palace and embraced by head of state Giorgio Napolitano, reflecting a feeling among many Italians that they have been unjustly detained.

Several government ministers and high-ranking military officials also met marines Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone while they were in Italy.

The two sailors, part of a team protecting the tanker Enrica Lexie, are accused of shooting two fishermen they say they mistook for pirates off the southern Indian state of Kerala in February.

The incident has caused a serious diplomatic dispute between Italy and India, which have traditionally had good relations.

Italy has taken the case to India's supreme court, saying the shooting took place in international waters and was outside the jurisdiction of Indian courts.

The pair were required to hand over 60 million rupees ($1.1 million) as a guarantee to the court before leaving the country.

(Reporting by Antonella Cinelli; Writing by Catherine Hornby; Editing by Alison Williams)

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South Sudan accuses Sudan of bombing before leaders' summit

JUBA (Reuters) - South Sudan accused Sudan of launching air strikes on the southern side of their disputed border shortly before the leaders of the oil-producing African countries were due to meet to defuse tensions.

Several civilians were wounded in the attack in the southern state of Western Bahr El Ghazal on Wednesday, South Sudan's Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin told journalists.

Sudan's armed forces were not immediately available for comment but have regularly denied southern accusations of attacks in the past.

The two countries have been at loggerheads over oil, territory and a string of other disputes since the South split away from Sudan last year under the terms of a peace deal.

They came close to war in April and have yet to withdraw their armies from their shared boundary or resume oil exports from the landlocked South north through Sudanese pipelines.

Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his South Sudan counterpart Salva Kiir were due meet at a summit in Ethiopia on Friday to discuss how to set up the demilitarized border zone they agreed upon at a meeting in September.

Both presidents said this week they wanted to implement the September deals but diplomats are sceptical about the chances of a quick breakthrough.

CIVILIANS INJURED

"There were attacks yesterday (Wednesday) ... in the area of Kit Kit ... There was both ground and aerial bombardment," South Sudan's Barnaba Marial Benjamin told journalists in the South's capital Juba.

"The South Sudan armed forces were able to repulse the attack but the aerial bombardment has caused a lot of injuries to the civilians in the area," he said.

Sudan's army spokesman al-Sawarmi Khalid could not be reached on his mobile phone.

Sudan regularly denies launching air strikes against the South though Reuters reporters witnessed several attacks when border fighting escalated in April. The ownership of many areas close to the border is disputed by both countries.

South Sudan, which inherited three-quarters of oil production when it broke away, shut down its entire output of 350,000 barrels a day in January after tensions over pipeline fees escalated.

Both sides have a history of first signing and then not implementing agreements due to a deep mistrust going back to the north-south civil war, fuelled by oil, ethnicity and ideology that led up to last year's partition.

Sudan accuses South Sudan of supporting rebels who operate in two states on the border with South Sudan. Juba has denied the charge and accuses Khartoum of backing rebels on its territory.

Both countries need the oil to support their crumbling economies. Analysts say both governments are also using the confrontation to shore up domestic support and divert attention from a lack of development.

(Reporting by Misuk Moses and Carl Odera in Juba; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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