AFGHANISTAN: The Minister of Air Transport and Tourism in Afghanistan's interim government, Dr Abdul Rahman, was beaten to death by Afghan pilgrims at Kabul airport yesterday, al-Jazeera satellite television reported last night.
"Angry pilgrims assaulted the minister following rumours that he cancelled one of the flights taking them to Saudi Arabia to perform the hajj in order to use the plane to travel to India with his family," the Qatari-based channel added.
Meanwhile, the alleged kidnapper of the US journalist, Daniel Pearl (38), told a Pakistani court yesterday the reporter was dead, reversing earlier statements to police and sowing new confusion into the case.
The British-born Islamic militant, Sheikh Omar Ahmed Omar Saeed (29), the man police accuse of masterminding the kidnapping of Mr Pearl more than three weeks ago said: "I know he is dead. I will not defend the case," a source quoted Sheikh Omar as saying after he arrived in the court handcuffed and hooded.
The London-born militant had earlier confessed to police that he was behind the kidnapping, but told interrogators Mr Pearl was alive the last time he was in touch with his captors.
Mr Pearl's employer, the Wall Street Journal, said in a statement released after Sheikh Omar's court appearance that it believed its Bombay-based correspondent was still alive. Mr Pearl went missing on January 23rd as he researched a story on Islamic militants. His abductors, demanding the US release Pakistani prisoners captured in Afghanistan, threatened to execute him on February 1st.
In Afghanistan yesterday, while some coalition troops at the airport in the southern city of Kandahar queued to make 10-minute Saint Valentine's Day calls to their loved ones, others set out in search of the gunmen who sparked a 30-minute firefight on Wednesday night.
Major A.C. Roper of the US army said troops and two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters were dispatched on a search which netted seven "friendly" Afghans, who were quickly released.
The battle was the first taste of action for a recently-arrived Canadian infantry battalion, part of an 800-strong contingent of troops sent by Ottawa, and their Coyote light armoured vehicles joined yesterday's search.
An official weekly in Yemen said it had found family links between an alleged al-Qaeda militant who was killed when cornered by security forces on Wednesday, and one of the presumed September 11th suicide hijackers. Mr Samir Ahmad Mohammad al-Hada was the brother-in-law of Mr Khaled al-Mihdar, one of the suspected perpetrators of the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington, according to Yemen's defence ministry.
Meanwhile, in the Philippines, US forces in joint anti-terror exercises have apologised for the behaviour of two US troops who brandished their assault rifles in public, President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines said.
Photographs of two US soldiers in civilian clothes waving M-16 rifles outside a bank in the southern city of Zamboanga city made the front pages of national dailies on Wednesday, triggering complaints from legislators. -
